234 



HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



choice was predetermined, and the wrong-doing 

 shared or caused by others, must be taken into 

 account by the Judge of all. And by us, wrong- 

 doers of very different kinds — those who make 

 mistakes and those who deliberately transgress — 

 should not be classed together indiscriminately, 

 either in guilt or in punishment. " It is very 

 singular," says Dr. Holmes, " that we recognize 

 all the bodily defects that unfit a man for military 

 service, and all the intellectual ones that limit 

 his range of thought ; but always talk at him as 

 though all his moral powers were perfect. . . . 

 Some persons talk about the human will as if 

 it stood on a high lookout with plenty of light, 

 and elbow room reaching to the horizon. Doc- 

 tors are constantly noticing how it is tied up 

 and darkened by inferior organization, by dis- 

 ease, and all sorts of crowding interferences ; until 

 they get to look upon Hottentots and Indians — 

 and many of their own race too — as a kind 

 of self-conscious blood-clocks, with very limited 

 power of self-determination ; and they find it as 

 hard to hold a child accountable in any moral 

 point of view for inherited bad temper, or ten- 

 dency to drunkenness, as they would to blame 

 him for inheriting gout or asthma." ^ Dr. Elam 



1 Quoted in A Physician's Problems, Elam, p. 59. 



