INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL HEREDITY 



47 



probable that the records of crime in other States 

 would show cases equally striking. 



If any law is well established it is the law of 

 heredity, as manifested in the transmission of qual- 

 ities and tendencies that lead to vice, pauperism, 

 and crime. Indeed, much of pauperism is only 

 one manifestation, and much of vice is largely the 

 outcome, of physical disease, the hereditary nature 

 of which we have already discovered. A large 

 proportion of the dangerous classes have received 

 from a vicious ancestry qualities and tendencies 

 which, with their environment, they are almost 

 powerless to resist. That which is the heritage 

 of intemperate and licentious parents, — a weak- 

 ened vital state which almost destroys ambition 

 and makes labour seem impossible, — society de- 

 nounces as laziness. But we are always at first 

 what others make us. Our parents determine the 

 time and place of our birth, and the surroundings 

 into which we shall come, and from them, or 

 through them, come our characteristics. The vir- 

 tues and vices of those who have lived in other 

 ages reach into our time and affect us. Disease, 

 habit, moral and intellectual tendencies and qual- 

 ities, vices and virtues, all are in the stream of 

 heritage which comes from the past. There are 

 exceptions, no doubt, to this law, and in it are 



