IQO HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



it will make comparatively little difference whether 

 or not the pledge is taken. In other words, re- 

 demption of the environment is the indispensable 

 condition of redemption of the inhabitants. Or- 

 ganisms respond to their environment. Men are 

 like their surroundings. If reform, in any of the 

 departments considered in this chapter, is ever per- 

 manent, it will be as a result of such influences 

 brought to bear on society as shall make a new 

 and better environment, and consequently a better 

 stock. 



The practical question then arises as to how 

 these ends may be realized. Not by any treat- 

 ment of the vicious and criminal classes which 

 fails to recognize, and to hold them to a recogni- 

 tion of, freedom and responsibility. No doubt the 

 study of heredity makes faith in freedom difficult. 

 All that is added to the one seems to be sub- 

 tracted from the other. This, we have seen, is 

 not the whole truth, however. Freedom is real ; 

 and men must be continually confronted with it 

 and its attendant responsibility. 



Until they are born again, if men think they are 

 not accountable, they will follow their selfish incli- 

 nations ; and if society teaches that they are driven 

 by forces over which they have no control, they 

 will, by and by, turn those forces on society to its 



