THE PROBLEM OF THE WILL 75 



choose according to those desires that are deter- 

 mined either by heredity or by some experience 

 that has overcome heredity. 



Let us now consider some ilkistrations which 

 show that choices are modified by heredity. The 

 facts would probably not be doubted by many care- 

 ful students of human life. The question whether 

 acquired characteristics can be transmitted, touches 

 only the particular kind of influence that may be 

 exerted over one generation by its predecessors. 

 If Dr. Weismann is right, and acquired traits are 

 never transmitted, it is still true, as he and all biol- 

 ogists teach, that natural traits and tendencies are 

 handed down, and that ancestral environment also 

 reaches a controlling hand to future generations 

 through its direct influence on the reproductive 

 cells. 



Be the true scientific doctrine in the abstract 

 what it may, there is great unanimity in the belief 

 that children of drunkards inherit a taste for liquor. 

 They are born with diseased brain-cells. As a 

 tendency to certain forms of disease runs in cer- 

 tain families, so tendencies toward the appetites 

 and passions of parents appear in their offspring. 

 Those tendencies may not be resistless, but they 

 are real. When a child of drunken parents is 

 tempted to take liquor, there will be all the allure- 



