BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1245 



not gain a new talent when we make our five talents ten, which is 

 an easier thing to do perhaps than making our three six. While 

 each of us may have our distinctive pattern, fashioned with strands 

 which come from our forefathers, yet there is evidence that we can 

 add new kinds of strands. 



Moreover, the student of heredity would also say to the sociologist : 

 These hereditary qualities are like buds, and what the buds become 

 depends upon the sunshine and the rain and the wind and the soil. 

 They may unfold generously or in a niggardly way; they may fall 

 asleep altogether — which is sometimes very much to be desired — 

 but let us remember Walt Whitman's "Buds to be unfolded on the 

 old terms." Heredity buds to be unfolded on the old terms, which 

 include for the child- actual sunshine and rain and wind and trees 

 and all wild nature generally; and it is difficult to evade the fore- 

 boding that the artificiality of our environment may rob the buds 

 of those liberating stimuli which are, or used to be, necessary for 

 their normal unfolding. Give every reasonable opportunity for the 

 expansion of the parts of the bud, but do not expect a magical 

 shoot. 



The student of heredit}^ has another very interesting contribution 

 to make to sociology, namely, that man's inheritance consists in 

 part of unit characters or Mendelian characters; that is to say, 

 characteristics which neither blend or break up. It is very important, 

 sociologicall}^ to bear in mind that these strains in our being have 

 an extraordinary power of lasting from generation to generation. 

 We alread}/ instanced Jean Nougaret, born in 1647, who was 

 affected by night-blindness, due to a lack of visual purple in the 

 retina at the back of the eye, so that he could not see well or at all 

 in dim light. Since 1647, when Charles I was King, a certain per- 

 centage of the descendants of Jean Nougaret in each generation have 

 been night-blind. So with the Hapsburg lip, and so with delightful 

 things like the Celtic temperament and with troublesome things like 

 a roving disposition — they are persistent strains in the inheritance 

 of mankind. It may be that traits once expressed in the robber 

 baron are rehabilitated to-day in the money-grabbing profiteer. 

 It may be that traits of Palaeolithic man are still lingering in our 

 midst, traits not only of body, but of mind. It is easy to speak about 

 having a mind of our own, but that is the most difficult thing in the 

 world. Our minds are much less our own than we think, for they 

 contain, in spite of ourselves, catholic strains and puritan strains 

 and scholastic strains, and they land us in thoughts and acts for 

 which we spend a good deal of our time in finding what we call 

 "good reasons." Our minds are probably full of ancestral Mende- 

 lian .strands. 



There is great sociological as well as biological importance in the 

 occurrence of crisply defined Mendelian characteristics. Let us get the 



