280 REV. PROF. A. CALDECOTT, D.LITT., D.D., ON 
On the other hand when we consider human nature we see 
that there is a larger scope for individuality than in the rest of 
nature. There is the important fact of long life and slow 
progress to maturity, during which each individual is the subject 
of experiences so complex as to be, strictly speaking, unique. 
True, the oak has a still longer period of youth, but its 
“experiences,” so to speak, are not varied, and its range of 
variation is very limited indeed. And the elephant has as long 
a youth as man, with more range of variety in its experiences 
than a tree has, and in so far as this is the case we see the 
result in the differences of individual character. 
But the principal difference lies in the extent and scope of 
consciousness ; and the higher we look the smaller appear the 
resemblances between successive generations and the more pro- 
minently do the differences stand out. The variation of mental 
character between individual dogs is greater than that between 
individual sheep, and that between wild sheep which live by their 
wits greater than the difference between sheep living in a flock 
with all food and shelter provided and the minimum of demand 
made upon individual intelligence. And in the human race the 
differences between individual Negroes of the lower grades on 
the damp coast is much less than between those living in the 
exercise of more varied intelligence in the hinterland of the 
Sudan. In India the low-caste occupations and dead level of 
life exhibit almost identical individuals, as compared with the 
differences possible to the people of high education and more 
varied externals of life. But it needs no elaboration to support 
the statement that the higher the call upon mental faculty the 
greater the scope for individuality and the appearance of 
differences and variations as compared with the resemblances 
and identities of Heredity. 
Hence it is that so little has been discovered for Heredity by 
investigations such as Sir Francis Galton’s as to Hereditary 
Genius. Sir Francis might have known that he was searching in 
precisely the most unlikely part of the field, unless we take it 
that his courage is so hizh that he prefers to lead a forlorn hope 
and attack the problem just where it offers the smallest pros- 
pect of successful result. 
Need we who are concerned especially with the highest 
experiences in the life of man, his religion, be averse to supposing 
that the biological processes of inheritance are in operation 
over the lower ranges of mind-life? or if not identical processes, 
some others yet to be discovered but quite similar to them ? 
As I said above, I do not find that Biologists or Psychologists 
