306 Heredity and Environment 



al rectitude, judgment and poise, which are the chief characteris- 

 tics which distinguish the great man from his fellows, it will 

 probably never be possible to predict the result before the event. 



He would be a bold prophet who would undertake to predict 

 the type of personality which might be expected in the children of 

 a given union. Some very unpromising stocks have brought 

 forth wonderful products. Could anyone have predicted Abraham 

 Lincoln from a study of his ancestry? Observe I say "predict," 

 and not "explain" after his appearance. Can anyone now predict 

 from what kind of ancestral combinations the great scholars, 

 statesmen, men of affairs of the next generation will come? The 

 time may come when it will be possible to predict what the 

 chances are that the children of given parents will inherit more 

 or less than average intellectual capacity, but since germinal po- 

 tentiality is transformed into intellectual ability only as the result 

 of development such a prediction could not be extended to the 

 latter unless the environment as well as the heredity were known. 



Mankind is such a mongrel race, good and bad qualities are 

 so mixed in us, marriage is such a lottery, the distribution of the 

 germinal units to the different germ cells and the union of par- 

 ticular germ cells in fertilization is so wholly a matter of chance, 

 the influence of even bad hereditary units on one another is so 

 unpredictably good or bad as is shown in many hybrids, even the 

 minor influences of environment and education which escape at- 

 tention are so potent in development, that the chances were in- 

 finity to one against any one of us, with all his individual charac- 

 teristics, ever coming into existence. If the Greeks or Romans 

 had known of the real infinity of chances through which every 

 human being is brought to the light of day not only would they 

 have deified Chance but they would have made her the mother 

 of gods and men. 



Selective Mating. But granting the impossibility of predicting 

 the character of children it may well be asked if good general ad- 

 vice may not be given regarding the choosing of a mate. Many 



