Social Consequences of Heredity. 361 



will be our special study to throw light upon a point which, in 

 our eyes, is of great philosophical importance namely, the con- 

 flict of heredity and free-will. 



The family is a natural fact. Numerous works both in France 

 and abroad show this, and have related the history of the family, 

 described its various forms, and arranged the moral relations which 

 subsist between its members. But with this we have here no 

 concern. 



From the stand-point of heredity too generally overlooked by 

 moralists it may be said that all forms of the family are reducible 

 to two principal and opposite types, around which oscillate a great 

 number of intermediate forms. The one allows a very large part 

 to heredity, and a very small part to individual free-will. The 

 other allows a very large part to individual free-will, but regards 

 hereditary transmission as the exception, not the law. The former 

 is the rule of strict conservatism ; the latter the rule of testa- 

 mentary liberty. 



If we examine the first of these types, we find it under various 

 forms in all primitive civilizations, and it rests on a very firm faith 

 in heredity. The child is regarded as the direct continuation of 

 the parents ; and indeed, properly speaking, between father and 

 son, between mother and daughter, there is no distinction of 

 persons there is only one person under a two-fold appearance. 

 If this idea be applied to the entire series of generations, we find 

 the case to be thus : in the first place is a family chief, a mys- 

 terious and revered being, usually ranked with the gods ; then a 

 succession of generations, each represented by the fir.st-born son, 

 who is the visible incarnation of the first father, and whose part is 

 essentially conservative. He collects together the religious beliefs, 

 the traditions and the possessions of the family, and transmits them 

 in turn. He may not alienate anything or destroy anything. 

 He can alter nothing in the invariable order of succession which 

 wraps him round in its fatality. Under such a regime, individual 

 free-will counts for little, while heredity is supreme. This is a 

 pantheistic organization of the family; heredity being the in- 



