SOME ASPECTS OF ZOOLOGY 61 



generations of honest, serviceable members of the community, 

 none of whom had ever brought discredit on the family name. 

 It should be a matter of solicitude that no taint, in other 

 words unfavourable factors, should be introduced by marriage, 

 and public and family opinion should discourage the trans- 

 mission of such taints, physical or mental, as the records 

 might show to exist. Nothing but good, and great 

 good, could result from such an awakening of interest and 

 responsibility. 



There are, I know well, many humble homes which main- 

 tain a proper family pride, and could, if records had been kept, 

 point to an ancestry which for consistent well-doing would 

 not suffer in comparison with more pretentious pedigrees. 

 And from such families individuals arise, and have arisen 

 throughout history, who have attained positions in which 

 they have done good and even great service to the State. 

 But many more fail to realise their potentialities for lack of 

 opportunity. An improved social system should redress this 

 inequality. Mutations, whether in the shape of the produc- 

 tion of new factors, or in the shape of the combination of 

 factors distributed among individuals of the population, are 

 always proportionate to numbers, and therefore most frequent 

 in the most numerous class. In all classes there will be 

 unfavourable as well as favourable mutations, but in a " good 

 stock " the chances of desirable mutations will be the greater, 

 because in such a stock there will already be an accumulation 

 of favourable factors. 



I will conclude by calling your attention to a statement of 

 Weismann's, cordially endorsed by Darwin and supported by 

 the most recent investigations : that in every case of modifica- 

 tion there are two factors (the term is not used in its technical 

 sense), the nature of the environment and the nature of the 

 organism, and the latter is much the more important of the 

 two. Hitherto all sociological effort has been directed to the 

 environment. Is it not time to accept the teaching of zoology, 

 and to pay some attention to the nature of the organism, which 

 is so much more important, and, I may add, so much more 

 certain in the effects it produces ? 



