26 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



moral and intellectual vesture ; without which, 

 notwithstanding its innate human heritage, it 

 would, were the experiment made, grow up into 

 a repulsive spectacle of brute-like savagery. So 

 much does steady fashioning do to make man 

 by habit of growth the decent being which he is 

 apt to think he is by natural grace. In the last 

 war against China by the allied troops of Europe 

 and Japan, when rape, robbery and murder 

 were hideous features of inglorious victories, the 

 Japanese only were comparatively blameless ; for 

 they, urged by the strong motive to rank as a 

 civilized nation, advisedly and rigidly enforced for 

 the occasion a rule of decent restraint which was 

 brutally outraged by the unloosened passions of 

 the Christian nations. Looking to stand on an 

 equal moral level with the Christians Japan enjoyed 

 the flattering surprise to behold itself an artificial 

 exception and example. So quickly and com- 

 pletely in stress of trial can be put off the moral 

 vesture which has been painfully put on for nearly 

 two thousand years and still fits but loosely. 



Very different it is with the stable structure 

 of a disused organ or instinct which, dwindling 

 in slow atrophy through the ages after it has 

 ceased to be of use to the species, long persists 

 as a discoverable remainder. The anatomist still 

 detects the relics of lower limbs hidden in the 

 whale's sides, and the basic instincts of the savage 

 lie deep and strong in the civilized man. Nor 

 could it go well with the human species if its 



