HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 347 



be highly unscientific to deny that hereditary influences 

 are manifest in predispositions and fixed tendencies; but 

 it would be quite as inexact to maintain that these im- 

 plicitly contain the future conditions and control the evolu- 

 tion of the psychical being. 



There is nothing more complicated than education. We 

 cannot here undertake to go to the depths of its general 

 management, which has been the subject of so many vol- 

 umes. The importance everywhere attributed to works 

 on the training of children is in itself alone a protest 

 against the abuse of theories on heredity. A few novel 

 details as to one of the main instruments of education, the 

 instinct of imitation, and as to the share it has in the de- 

 velopment of individuals and races, will suffice to teach an 

 estimate of the power of those influences alien to heredity. 



A learned English historian, Bagehot, has lately written 

 some admirable pages to prove how strong an influence the 

 unconscious imitation of a popular character or type, and 

 the general favor shown to this character or this type, the 

 traits of which are instinctively copied by the public, exerts 

 over the formation of customs and of tastes, while at the 

 same time giving the key to periodical revolutions in such 

 tastes and customs. In his view, national character is 

 nothing else than local character which has made its way 

 upward, precisely as the national tongue is merely the 

 lasting extension of a local dialect. Nothing is more real 

 than the force of that tendency to imitation, in consequence 

 of which, in industry, the arts, literature, and manners, cer- 

 tain ways of doing, devised under very special conditions, 

 gain general prevalence, and very soon impress themselves, 

 at first on the unreflecting and obedient multitude, and 

 then upon those who have most ability to test and resist 

 them. This leads to the remark that the chosen few are 

 almost always forced to follow the tastes and demands of 

 the many, under pain of being neglected or despised. A 



