SPIRITUAL HEREDITY 217 



The question of their mutual consistency is therefore 

 well-nigh unavoidable in a defence of catholic doctrine. 

 It seems to me that when Dr. Tennant acknowledges 

 an inheritance of mental qualities, and from a creation- 

 ist standpoint explains this inheritance as taking place 

 "in the form of modified physical structure," "medi- 

 ated solely through the body," ^ he supplies a theory 

 which completely removes the inconsistency which he 

 suggests as possibly existing between creationism and 

 the doctrine of original sin. In its catholic form that 

 doctrine hypothecates the transmission of a state of 

 conflict between animal and moral tendencies in which 

 animal propensities are found frequently to gain the vic- 

 tory. But this conflict is certainly due to physical ante- 

 cedents, although it is mental and moral in its results. 

 That is, the state of the soul is determined to an im- 

 portant extent by the physical organism in which it 

 exercises its functions. If, therefore, the physical con- 

 ditions under which a new-bom child develops moral 

 character and performs moral actions are inherited, 

 it is clear that the tendency to sin which these conditions 

 explain is also inherited, whatever view we may take as 

 to the origin of the soul. If the soul owes its origin in 

 each child to special creation, the fact remains that it 

 begins its moral and spiritual functioning under ahandi- 



success of the efforts made to reconcile creationism with the doctrine 

 of original sin. See J. F. Bethune-Baker, Early Hist, of Christ. 

 Doctrine, pp. 302-304. It seems impossible to accept this writer's 

 assertion in a concluding note, that "the Traducian theory is the 

 only one which modern biological knowledge supports." 

 1 Op. cit., p. 35. 



