HEREDITY AND THE SOLIDARITY OF BEINGS. 42 1 



each other: they are both of them, In their own way,, 

 valid and indispensable. The second statement, 

 will continue to be the most serviceable for most of 

 the ordinary purposes- of life, and in the- view of a. 

 physical science which, is not concerned to raise the 

 question of the ultimate nature of things and the 

 final meaning of its own assertions. But the first 

 will be the truest and completest, because meta- 

 physical statement, and that most expressive of the 

 highest aspirations of our moral nature. And it 

 will enable us not merely to accept heredity as a 

 fact, but also to understand it, to give a rational 

 interpretation of the part it plays in the scheme of 

 things. 



§ 22. For when heredity is considered, not in 

 abstract isolation as a scientific fact, but in its con- 

 nection with the totality of things, it will be found 

 to be only an extreme manifestation or illustration 

 of the metaphysical principle of the solidarity of 

 things. 



This principle, of which the high-est generalization 

 of physics, the all-sustaining force of gravity, forms 

 one of the lowest instances, may be traced in its 

 manifold applications throughout the sphere of 

 sociology. The present throughout depends on the 

 past, alike in the case of the soclaj organism col- 

 lectively and of its members individually. We 

 inherit the institutions, the material and intellectual 

 products of the labours of our ancestors collectively, 

 just as surely as we inherit their bodies individually, 

 and posterity in its turn will inherit the conditions of 

 life such as we have made them. And perhaps the 

 spiritual inheritance of the social environment is 

 hardly less important than the physical heritage 

 which is directly transmitted. And thus the signlfi- 



