DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



moral unit. Plato, in the Lazvs, 1 professes to 

 regard robbers of temples as persons suffering 

 from an incurable malady, " a madness be- 

 gotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated 

 crimes of his race, destroying him when his 

 time is come." Aristotle uses the idea to make 

 a quiet professorial joke, when he is speaking 

 about certain abnormal moral tendencies : he 

 tells of the man who excused himself for beating 

 his father by saying that it was an inherited 

 practice in his family for the son to beat the 

 father, and of another family in which the sons 

 used to drag their father to the door but no 

 further. 2 There is indeed a singular fascination, 

 horrible at times as it may be, in the idea that 

 the experiences of ancestors survive as the 

 feelings of the descendants ; but a great part 

 of the prevalent opinion about heredity seems 

 to be only mythology or fiction masquerading 

 as science. Of course one who is not a 

 biologist has no right to a private opinion in 

 a biological controversy. But one must feel a 

 keen interest in the discussion at present going 

 on, as to whether acquired characteristics are 

 transmitted or not. The negative opinion 

 1 ix. 854. 2 i / L tf ic% v ii. 62. 



