THE LESSON OF HEREDITY 



of tendencies, of course, but it does not eliminate the 

 old tendencies; and these old tendencies, reacting to a 

 changed environment, may produce a very different 

 individual result in a succeeding generation. 



The average results, in deviation from the old average, 

 only assume permanence when the race is subjected 

 generation after generation to the conditions that first 

 wrought an individual change. The Esquimaux, for 

 example, have come to be a race of relative dwarfs 

 because their environment has for generations been 

 defective from a nutritional standpoint. But no doubt 

 atavism still holds for them the tendency of remote 

 ancestors to larger stature, and under changed me- 

 teorological conditions they would doubtless return 

 gradually to the old-time average. 



But even under conditions as they exist, environment 

 has not changed the physical, mental or moral qualities 

 of this race in kind, but only in degree. The broad 

 synoptical outline of qualities inherited from the remote 

 common ancestry are still the same as those of every 

 other race of human beings in the world. It is the 

 specific, the newer, and hence, on the whole, the less 

 essential qualities that differ. 



If this is true of different races of men, it must be far 

 more tangibly true of the extremes of the same race, 

 who live under conditions much less widely variable 

 than those that separate the races. Caucasian and 

 Esquimau must perhaps go back millennia to find a 

 common ancestor; but the lord of the manor and his 

 lowliest servant have probably had common ancestors 

 within a few centuries past. Not merely their funda- 



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