346 NATURE AND LIFE. 
primitive simplicity a manifold and resistless variability, 
of which the present condition of the world is the con-— 
vineing proof. 
II. 
What precedes is but an historic refutation. A more 
direct and scientific refutation will, at the same time, be 
more positive and more instructive. After proving that 
heredity has not exerted exclusive and unbroken influence, 
we must state the causes which act together with and in 
opposition to it. We must point out the continuous and 
potent activity of those forces which tend, as we have said, 
to modify, to alter, and complicate thought, feeling, passion, 
manners, and customs. 
The special object of education is to transmit to the 
child the sum of those habits to which he will need to con- 
form in practical life, and the sum of those acquirements 
which will be essential to him for pursuing his calling ; but 
it must begin by unfolding in kim those pewers which will 
enable him to become master of such habits and of such 
acquisitions. It teaches the child to speak, to move, tosee, 
to feel, to hear, to understand, to judge, tolove. Now the 
influence of education, counter to that of heredity, is so 
great that the former of itself, in most cases, has the power 
of effecting a real moral and psychological likeness be- 
tween parents and children. If heredity positively and 
irresistibly brought about in descendants the reproduction 
of all the characteristics constituting the personality of 
their ancestors, education would be of no use. Since edu- 
cation, and that a protracted, watchful, and toilsome educa- 
tion, is indispensable to bring out the appearance and pro- 
duce the development of the child’s aptitudes and mental 
qualities, we must needs conclude that heredity takes 
merely a secondary part in this wonderful genesis of the 
moral person. This argument is unanswerable. It would 

