LECTURE VI. 



HEREDITY : THE GREAT CONSERVATIVE FORCE IN 

 EVOLUTION. 



Like begets like/' "Blood will tell." Creatures 

 resemble their ancestors. Eacb creature in a sense a 

 mosaic of its ancestry, rather than an " ego." " The 

 specialization of the single cell, which is capable of 

 repeating the whole with the precision of a work of 

 art/- 

 With birth " the gate of gifts is closed." These gifts 

 the hereditary stock which one generation receives 

 from that which precedes it. 



"Science finds no ego, self, or will that can main- 

 tain itself against the past. Heredity rules our lives 

 like the supreme primeval necessity that stood above 

 the Olympian gods. i It is the last of the fates and 

 the most terrible. It is the only one of the gods whose 

 name we know.' . . . We are possessed, not In- 

 dentions, but by the dead. These are the real ghosts 

 which throng our lives, haunt our footsteps, remorse- 

 less as the furies. We are followed by the shades of 

 our ancestors, who visit us, not with midnight squeak 

 or gibber, but in the broad noonday, speaking with 

 our speech and doing with our deed. On the stage of 

 life the actors recite speeches and follow stage direc- 

 tions written for them long before they were born. v - 

 Edward A. Ross. 



