“The experience-hypothesis,” says Spencer, “is inadequate to account for emotional phenomena. It is even more at fault in respect to the emotions than in respect to the cognitions. The doctrine that all the desires, all the sentiments, are generated by the experiences of the individual, is so glaringly at variance with facts that I wonder how any one should ever have entertained it.” And he cites “the multiform passions of the infant, displayed before there has been any such amount of experience as could possibly account for them.”
In short, there is no possible room for argument as to whether each particular character—with all its possibilities, intellectual or emotional—is not predetermined by the character of nervous structure, slowly evolved by millions of billions of experiences in the past. As the differences in the ancestral sums of experiences, so the differences in the psychical life. Varying enormously in races so widely removed as English and Japanese, it is impossible to believe that any feeling in one race is exactly parallelled by any feeling in the other. It is equally impossible to think that the feelings of a Japanese child can be the same as those of an English child born in Japan. Amazing physical proof to the contrary would be afforded by a comparative study of the two nervous structures.
To say, therefore, that the sight of a toy—adjusted exactly by the experience of the race to the experience of the individual—produces on the mind of a Japanese child the same impression it would produce on the mind of an English child born in Japan and brought up by Japanese only, would be to deny all our modern knowledge of biology, psychology, and even physiology. The pleasure of the Japanese child in its toy is the pleasure of the dead.
Ever faithfully,
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN
Kōbe, April, 1895.
Dear Chamberlain,—“The law of heredity is unlimited in its application” (Spencer, “Biology,” vol. i, chapter “Heredity”). “Some naturalists seem to entertain a vague belief [like yours?] that the law of heredity applies only to main characters of structure, and not to details; or that though it applies to such details as constitute differences of species, it does not apply to smaller details. The circumstance that the tendency to repetition is in a slight degree qualified by the tendency to variation (which ... is but an indirect result of the tendency to repetition) leads some to doubt whether heredity is unlimited. A careful weighing of the evidence ... will remove the ground for this skepticism.” (“Biology,” vol. i, p. 239.)
Your statement that the “weak person will always remain weak,” but that “the manifestations of his weakness will surely depend on the nature of the obstacles in his way,” is a proof that you do not perceive the full reach of the explanation. The manifestations of weakness may be evoked by obstacles, but the nature of those manifestations cannot possibly have anything in common with the nature of the obstacles. The weakness being hereditary, the nature of the obstacle cannot change it.
The case of the Northern nations seems to me direct proof of the contrary to what you suggest. Olaf Trygvesson and others never really changed the national religion, except in name,—no such rapid change would have been possible. The worship of Odin and Thor continued under the name of Christ and the Saints,—and still continues to some extent to influence English life. The shaking-off of ecclesiastical power at a later day,—the protestantizing of the Northern races,—is certainly the manifestation in history of the same fierce love of freedom that founded the Icelandic Republic. So with English limitation of monarchical power, the history of the constitution, etc. So with the superiority of English and Norse seamanship to-day,—Vikings still command our fleet. The changes you cite as evidence of the non-influence of heredity really prove it: they are, moreover, mere surface-shiftings of colour, and do not reach down into the national life. Variations are the result of heredity, not the exceptions to it. The explanation of this fact would necessitate, however, a long discussion on the deepening or weakening of those channels of nerve-force which are the river-courses of life and thought. Similarly, growth—of brain and thought as well as of body—is the consequence, not the contradiction, of inheritance. So with instinct,—which is organized memory,—and with genius, which represents accumulations of capacity (often at the expense of other growths).