2IO ORIGINAL SIN 



Weismann's view. If we concede for argument's sake 

 that ordinary acquired characters cannot be trans- 

 mitted, extreme instances of radical modification might 

 well be regarded as exceptions that prove the rule, 

 their effect being sufficiently penetrative to overpass the 

 barriers that normally isolate the germ-cell from the 

 rest of the organism. A modification of moral dis- 

 position affects personality at its root, and personality 

 is the determinative characteristic of human nature, 

 than which there is none more central. Sin thus affects 

 human nature at its innermost point; and, if any modi- 

 fication acquired by parents can be inherited, surely 

 this one can.^ Once acquired and inherited, nothing 

 short of absolute sinlessness could bring about a 

 recessive modification capable of transmission in an 

 offspring possessed of man's original righteousness. 

 Human experience teaches that sinlessness is not a 

 character which man in his existing condition can 

 naturally acquire. 



What I have been saying presupposes not only a 

 vital connection and mutual interaction between mind 

 and body — between moral and physical functioning, — 

 but also a difference in kind between them. A denial 

 of this difference is not scientific, but wholly depends 

 for its truth upon the validity of the naturalistic philoso- 

 phy, and of its description of all realities in mechanical 

 terms. We need not again point out the fallacies of 

 that philosophy. No other philosophy, however, can 



* Such a method of argument is adopted by J. Orr, God's Image, 

 pp. 237-243. 



