12 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



ulty, directly from the mother. He was pleased 

 to imagine that he found in his own person the 

 irrefutable evidence of this doctrine. Intellectual 

 and subtle like his mother, who had literary tastes 

 and lived in Goethe's circle at Weimar, he was, 

 like his father, shy, obstinate, intractable ; he 

 was a man of ' scowling mien and of fantastic 

 judgments.' "^ 



It has been often affirmed also that sons re- 

 semble their mothers and daughters their fathers. 

 A careful examination of statistical tables, such 

 as those of Galton, shows that the reverse is so 

 often true as to vitiate all theories which rest on 

 that foundation. With the object of our inquiry 

 the causes of variation might seem to be of sec- 

 ondary importance. The relation of heredity 

 to the will, to character, to religion, seems at 

 first to be the same, whatever the theory as to 

 the cause of the exceptions. A very serious fact, 

 however, and a far-reaching question confront 

 us at this point. The fact is that the word varia- 

 tion is only a general term for the beginnings of 

 improvement or of decline. The question is, 

 whether man can so control or influence varia- 

 tion as to insure progress and prevent degenera- 

 tion } In other words, Can acquired traits be 



^ Heredity, Ribot, p. 154. 



