222 The Bible of Nature 



time into itself. In his whole thought of the evo- 

 lution, he must see it in relation to the end. In 

 short, in philosophical language, "If the lower 

 carries in it the promise and potency of the higher, 

 then how can we substantiate the lower as out of 

 relation to the higher in which we read the mean- 

 ing of the whole development ? " (A. S. Pringle- 

 Pattison.) 



Inheritance. Let us think for a moment of the 

 fundamental fact of inheritance. 1 As Huxley says ^ 



"Every one of us bears upon him obvious marks of his 

 parentage, perhaps of remoter relationships. More par- 

 ticularly, the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, 

 which we call 'character,' is often to be traced through a 

 long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may 

 justly say that this 'character' this moral and intellectual 

 essence of a man does veritably pass over from one 

 fleshly tabernacle to another and does really transmigrate 

 from generation to generation. In the new-born infant, 

 the character of the stock lies latent and the Ego is little 

 more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, 

 these become actualities; from childhood to age they 

 manifest themselves in dullness or brightness, weakness 

 or strength, viciousness or uprightness; and with each 

 feature modified by confluence with another character, if 

 by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation 

 in new bodies." 



Now let us extend this conception a little. From 



1 See J. Arthur Thomson, " Heredity," Murray, London, 

 1908. 

 > "Evolution and Ethics," p. 14. 



