12:4 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



slightly," &c. Of course this last is true to a certain 

 extent also ; if any member of the German colony 

 does "happen to be born," &c, then he will stand a 

 better chance of surviving, and, if he marries a wife 

 like himself, of transmitting his good qualities; but 

 how about the happening ? How is it that this is of 

 such frequent occurrence in the one colony, and is so 

 rare in the other ? Fortes creantur fortihus et bonis. 

 True, but how and why ? Through the race being 

 favoured ? In one sense, doubtless, it is true that no 

 man can have anything except it be given him from 

 above, but it must be from an above into the composi- 

 tion of which he himself largely enters. God gives 

 us all things ; but we are a part of God, and that part 

 of Him, moreover, whose department it more especially 

 is to look after ourselves. It cannot be through luck,, 

 for luck is blind, and does not pick out the same 

 people year after year and generation after generation ; 

 shall we not rather say, then, that it is because mind, 

 or cunning, is a great factor in the achievement of 

 physical results, and because there is an abiding 

 ■memory between successive generations, in virtue of 

 which the cunning of an earlier one enures to the 

 benefit of its successors ? 



It is one of the commonplaces of biology that the 

 nature of the organism (which is mainly determined 

 by ancestral antecedents) is greatly more important 

 in determining its future than the conditions of its 

 environment, provided, of course, that these are not 

 too cruelly abnormal, so that good seed will do better 

 on rather poor soil, than bad seed on rather good soil ; 



