20 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



original river is now a kind of composite stream, 

 in which is something from every locality through 

 which it has flowed. Such, say Spencer and his 

 school, is the life which is in every man ; it is not 

 as it came from the primal source, but as all liv- 

 ing beings have made it. But Weismann would 

 say that the life of man is rather a stream flow- 

 ing underground from the mountains to the sea, 

 and rising now and then in fountains, some of 

 which are saline, some sulphuric, some tinctured 

 with iron, and that the differences in the foun- 

 tains are due entirely to the soil passed through 

 in breaking forth to the surface, the mother- 

 stream down underneath all the salt, sulphur, and 

 iron flowing on toward the sea substantially 

 unchanged. 



When, now, these theories are applied to 

 human beings, the counsels they would have for 

 workers for humanity would be widely different 

 but for Weismann's concession about the direct 

 influence of environment on the reproductive 

 cells, for without that his theory would put the 

 forces of heredity entirely beyond human control 

 and shut us up to the use of the environment of, 

 and personal appeals to, the individual for all 

 morally progressive work. As it is, the outlook 

 is more hopeful. If acquired characteristics are 



