EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN 
53 
to move the will in different directions it obeys 
the stronger—follows the path of least resist¬ 
ance. It cannot do otherwise—no more than 
Newton’s apple could have moved toward the 
moon. 
Scientists are generally agreed that none 
but “inborn” traits, the inherited ones, are 
transmissible to posterity—though Dr. Kram- 
merer has recently furnished some evidence to 
the contrary. If the generally accepted view 
be the true one, then of course “acquired” 
characters—the “improvements” of environ¬ 
ment—die with the individual. Certainly, en¬ 
vironment cannot put into the individual what 
it had no capacity for at birth; it can only 
develop what is already there. Hence the con¬ 
clusion: We may, we must, improve the en¬ 
vironment for the good of the living genera¬ 
tions as they arise; but above all, prevent the 
reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable 
benefit of the countless generations that are 
now waiting their turn in the womb of the 
future. 
❖ . ❖ * 
Man is such an egotistical creature—being a 
near relative of the gods, as he imagined, and 
being specially created and made lord over the 
other creatures—that he has always regarded 
himself as above and bejmnd Nature and not 
subject to her laws, or only so far as his body 
was concerned—that being the one link con¬ 
necting him with Nature. 
As the little boy evolved from his inner con* 
