INHERITANCE 



321 



have wrought changes in the constitution of her segregated 

 strains appears in this ; their civilizations differ, and though 

 civilization be nurture, the capacity for it, the impulse 

 toward it and the genius to modify it must be inherent. 

 And, if this is true of tribes, it is true within each tribe, on a 

 lesser scale. "Blood does tell." To some extent at least 

 genius does run in families,* as also do criminal tendencies, 

 the capacity for the development of either being organic. 

 Hitherto human society has taken little account of these 

 springs of future character. 



The meaning of nurture. Most organisms give little nur- 

 ture to their young. They merely breed. Their innumer- 

 able progeny are scattered broadcast in a pitiless environ- 

 ment, and here and there, by chance, one survives. Des- 

 truction is the rule ; survival the rare exception. We have 

 already seen in our study of the plant and animal series how 

 the dominant organisms have made their advantages secure 

 by better care for their offspring during development; by 

 adding food to the egg or supplying it to the embryo, and 

 then by adding housing and parental care. Ever, there is 

 a lessening of the number of young produced coupled with 

 increase in the care for them. The powers of the body are 

 devoted less and less to starting new individuals in life and 

 more and more to the better equipment for life of those chat 

 are produced. The lioness of the fable might well boast that 

 though her offspring were but one at a birth, that one was a 

 lion ; and then might well care for it as though there were no 

 lions to spare. 



*I have often heard false pride of ancestry condemned, but I have 

 not seen the true pride of ancestry explained and commended. 

 Surely the man who is conscious that he comes of stock sound in 

 body, able in mind, tested in achievement, and who knows that, 

 mating with like stock and maintaining himself in health, he may 

 hand down that heritage to his children, surely such a man may 

 have a legitimate pride in ancestry." K. PEARSON 



