THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



been so ingrained in the race through persistent repeti- 

 tion that they can by no possibility be greatly altered 

 in a single generation. All the tendencies of all the 

 ancestors near and remote coincide in the direction of 

 these qualities. The transforming power of environ- 

 ment must turn chiefly to those newer tendencies which 

 have been developed in recent generations, and to a 

 decision between antagonistic tendencies. 



And yet even the primordial tendencies are not alto- 

 gether beyond the pale of environment, because none 

 of them is absolutely fixed by heredity. Take the matter 

 of stature, for example. The ancestral tendencies vary 

 within a limit of many inches. Some ancestors have 

 been perhaps but four feet tall; others have been 

 nearer seven feet. But there is a strong average 

 tendency perhaps towards a stature of between five and 

 one-half and six feet. Within these limits, environ- 

 ment may under ordinary circumstances decide. Nutri- 

 tional conditions during infancy, childhood, and ado- 

 lescence the presence or absence of disease at critical 

 periods, and the like will determine the exact stature 

 in the individual case, just as general nutritional 

 conditions have determined the average stature of 

 different races of men the Esquimaux, for example, 

 or the Patagonians. 



And what is true of the physical stature is equally 

 true, mutatis mutandis, of the mental and moral stature. 

 But the fact that the stature, physical, mental and moral, 

 is fixed at a certain limit for one individual, does not 

 irrevocably fix the limit for the offspring of that in- 

 dividual. Each individual case changes the average 



[308] 



