346 NATURE AND LIFE. 



primitive simplicity a manifold and resistless variability, 

 of which the present condition of the world is the con- 

 vincing proof. 



II. 



What precedes is but an historic refutation. A more 

 direct and scientific refutation will, at the same time, be 

 more positive and more instructive. After proving that 

 heredity has not exerted exclusive and unbroken influence, 

 we must state the causes which act together with and in 

 opposition to it. We must point out the continuous and 

 potent activity of those forces which tend, as we have said, 

 to modify, to alter, and complicate thought, feeling, passion, 

 manners, and customs. 



The special object of education is to transmit to the 

 child the sum of those habits to which he will need to con- 

 form in practical life, and the sum of those acquirements 

 which will be essential to him for pursuing his calling ; but 

 it must begin by unfolding in him those powers which will 

 enable him to become master of such habits and of such 

 acquisitions. It teaches the child to speak, to move, to see, 

 to feel, to hear, to understand, to judge, to love. Now the 

 influence of education, counter to that of heredity, is so 

 great that the former of itself, in most cases, has the power 

 of effecting a real moral and psychological likeness be- 

 tween parents and children. If heredity positively and 

 irresistibly brought about in descendants the reproduction 

 of all the characteristics constituting the personality of 

 their ancestors, education would be of no use. Since edu- 

 cation, and that a protracted, watchful, and toilsome educa- 

 tion, is indispensable to bring out the appearance and pro- 

 duce the development of the child's aptitudes and mental 

 qualities, we must needs conclude that heredity takes 

 merely a secondary part in this wonderful genesis of the 

 moral person. This argument is unanswerable. It would 



