T-il f&; 



The phenomena of heredity, in a general sense at least, 

 have been observed by all people at every age of the world's 

 history. Thus in the ancient and sacred laws of Manu, we 

 find the following aphorisms : " A woman always brings 

 into the world a son gifted with the same qualities as he 

 who begat him." "We may know by his- acts the man 

 that belongs to a low class, or who is born of a disre- 

 putable mother." " A man of low birth has the evil 

 disposition of his father, or of his mother, or of both he 

 can never hide his descent." So also in the Mosaic law : 

 " I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the 

 iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third 

 and fourth generation, etc." Elsewhere in the Bible we 

 read: "When the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the 

 children's teeth are set on edge." The well-known lines 

 of Horace are as follows : 



" Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis 

 Est in juvencis est in equis patrum 

 Virtus, nee imbellem feroces 

 Progenerant acquiloe columbam." 



Horace, Lib. iv. , Ode 4. 



Lastly also, Goethe, in his Iphigenia : 



" How blest is he who his progenitors 



With pride remembers, to the listener tells 

 The story of their greatness, of their deeds, 

 And, silently rejoicing, sees himself 

 The latest link of this illustrious chain ! 

 For seldom does the selfsame stock produce 

 The monster and the demigod : a line 

 Of good or evil ushers in at last 

 The glory or the terror of the world." 



The Lamarckian axiom that "Like produces like" can 

 only be regarded as a generalization, which however true as 

 such, yet when subjected to minute examination is found to 

 be erroneous, inasmuch as the tendency of like to produce 



