46 Heredity in its Relation to the Nervous System. 



connecting link between physiological and psychological 

 developments. This common ground presupposes a mental 

 bias, but what that bias is we cannot predict, we can only learn 

 by experience. That this bias can be altered or modified by 

 attention, an act of volition, to other influences, is a matter of 

 daily observation and experience. We cannot therefore but 

 conclude that the nervous system is seriously affected by 

 environment, habit and volition, and that there is an influence 

 directly transmitted from one generation to another. How far 

 this influence may be directed or counteracted by the will is a 

 question to be determined. If to-day we are the subjects of it, 

 this arises from the freedom of yesterday. Our good or ill may 

 be referred to the free acts of our predecessors, so we, by the 

 force of our own will, are the parents of our own acts, and may 

 influence the acts of others. Our consciousness convinces us 

 that, while we have acted in a certain way, it was in our own 

 power to have acted otherwise. The great past is the outcome 

 of human freedom, and it is to that freedom we must look for 

 the improvement or depreciation of the influences affecting 

 future genetations. 



Professor Gregg Wilson, in proposing a vote of thanks to Dr. 

 MacCormac for his lecture, said he was not going to say very 

 much, because after considering such grave matters as those 

 treated in the lecture one was more in a condition to think than 

 to talk. He believed Dr. MacCormac would have the effect of 

 stimulating a great deal of thought and controversy amongst 

 his audience. 



Mr. Robert Patterson seconded the vote of thanks, which was 

 uuanimously passed. 



Dr. MacCormac briefly replied in acknowlegement of the 

 vote. 



