HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 83 



was looked upon as respectable, acquired an edu- 

 cation, became a lawyer, and finally a judge. 

 Twenty-five years after the apple-stealing episode 

 the boy who ran away and escaped punishment 

 was the judge who sentenced to death for murder 

 the boy who had been caught and whose punish- 

 ment had started him in a career of crime." 

 (" Diseases of Society," 95.) 



A prominent preacher in Chicago said a few 

 days ago, "We have handed down to us the ambi- 

 tions and appetites, talents and taints, virtues and 

 vices of our ancestors, just as we get from them 

 our forms and features, our manners and voices." 

 This is probably true, but possibly not by the 

 identically same heredity. The heredity of the 

 flesh is somewhat differently conditioned from the 

 heredity of mind. The form and feature came to 

 us in the fleshly birth, and no matter what hap- 

 pens to us afterwards, they can not be wholly 

 eradicated. But the virtues and vices of our an- 

 cestors will have little influence upon us unless we 

 remain with them during those years when the 

 spirit is coming to its birth. Physical heredity is 

 about all that is given to us at birth. That which 

 is born of the flesh is flesh. There is no sort of 

 dispute concerning the power of heredity in the 

 nervous system. This accounts for all that is cer- 

 tainly proven concerning it. The moral traits, the 

 acquired traits, parents are not able to hand down 

 to their children unless they also have their train- 

 ing. But training is usually credited to environ- 



