L. S.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| Heredity, | [1] |
| Punishment, | [55] |
| Luxury, | [95] |
| The Duties of Authors, | [137] |
| The Vanity of Philosophising, | [183] |
| Forgotten Benefactors, | [225] |
HEREDITY.
I found, the other day, that an address upon Heredity had been announced, of which I was to be the deliverer. I admit that I was fully responsible for the statement, although, for reasons with which I need not trouble you, I was not quite prepared for it in this form. I mention this fact in order simply to say that the title may possibly give rise to false expectations. I am quite incompetent to express any opinion of the slightest scientific value upon certain problems suggested by that rather ugly word "heredity". The question as to the precise relationship between any organism and its parents or remoter ancestors, is one of the highest interest. The solution, for example, of the problem, whether is it possible for a living being to transmit to its descendants qualities which have only been acquired during its own lifetime, has an important bearing upon the general theory of evolution. But I have nothing whatever to suggest in regard to that problem. I simply take it for granted that there is some relation between parents and children: and a relation, speaking in the most general way, such that the qualities with which we start in life, resemble more or less closely those of our ancestors. I may also assume that, in some form or other, the doctrine of evolution must be accepted: and that all living things now in the world are the descendants, more or less modified, of the population which preceded them. I proceed to ask whether, as some people appear to believe, the acceptance of this doctrine in the most unqualified form, would introduce any difficulty into our primary ethical conceptions. I will also at once give my answer. I do not believe that it introduces any difficulty whatever. I do believe that the general theory of evolution tends in very important ways to give additional distinctness to certain ethical doctrines; although, to go at all fully into the how and the why would take me beyond my present purpose. All that I have to argue to-day is, that a belief in "heredity" need not be a stumbling-block to any reasonable person.
I cannot doubt that the popular mind is vaguely alarmed by the doctrine. I read, the other day, a novel by a well-known author, of which, so far as I can remember, the main substance was as follows: A virtuous doctor (his virtue had some limitations) studied the problem of heredity, and had read Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and Weissmann, and all the proper authorities. His own researches are carefully described, with the apparent assumption that they were both profound and of tremendous significance. He had, it appears, accumulated a vast amount of material; and his method was to cut out slips from newspapers, whenever they recorded any events in his own family history, and to preserve them in a mysterious cabinet. These investigations proved that there was a decided family likeness running through the descendants of a common ancestor. As a general rule, they had all belonged to the class "blackguard". From this result he inferred that there was no God and no soul. His relations were dreadfully scandalised: one was converted to his views; but the others contrived diabolical plots for setting fire to these marvellous collections and so stopping the contagion of these dreadful doctrines at their source. It struck me, I confess, that instead of burning the collections, they would have done better to ask him what was the connection between his premisses and his conclusions. What was this terrible, heart-paralysing truth which the poor man had discovered? Has any human being ever doubted, since mothers were invented, that children are apt to resemble their parents? I do not personally remember the fact, but I should be prepared to bet, if the point could be settled, that, before I was a month old,—and in those days neither Darwin nor Weissmann had published a line,—my nurse and my mother had affirmed that the baby was like his papa. That, at any rate, is a remark, the omission of which would show more originality than the assertion. If I desired, again, to produce classical authority for the importance of race, I should not have to extend my researches beyond the Latin Grammar. If, once more, we look into the writings of famous theologians, we meet it everywhere. I take the first that comes to hand. "Good men," says Calvin, "and beyond all others, Augustine, have laboured to demonstrate, that we are not corrupted by any adventitious means but that we derive an innate depravity from our very birth." The denial of this was an instance of consummate impudence—reserved, as Calvin shows, for such wicked heretics as Pelagius. The doctrine of heredity, in short, in a theological version, is essentially involved in the dogmatic foundations of the orthodox creed. I have no doubt that an investigation of the reasonings of Augustine and others would exhibit much affinity to modern controversy, though in a very different terminology. Whatever we may think of its merits, the doctrine of original sin implies that a depraved nature may have been transmitted to the whole human race; and, if the commonly alleged cause of the original depravity strikes us as insufficient, it is, at least, a very familiar argument of divines, that the doctrine corresponds to undeniable facts. Why should it startle us in a scientific dress? If we can transmit depravity, why not genius and bodily health? In one respect, modern theories tend rather to limit than to extend the applicability of the principle. No one ever doubted, nor could doubt, that the child of a monkey is always a monkey; and that the child of a negro, or even of a Mongol, has certain characteristics which distinguish it from the child of a European. But the difference is that, whereas it used to be held that there was an impassable barrier between the monkey and the man, it is now widely believed that both may be descendants from a common ancestor. Should this belief establish itself, we shall have to admit that, in spite of heredity, organic forms are capable of much wider variation than was believed by our fathers to be even conceivable.
Let us try, then, to discover some more plausible explanation of the fear excited by the doctrine. Now, I wish to give as wide a berth as possible to that freewill controversy which perplexes so many minds, and is apt to intrude at this point. I will try to assume,—though it is not my own position,—the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest sense that any reasonable person can devise. No such person will deny that there is a close connection—the terms of which have not yet been defined—between the physical constitution and the moral or intellectual character. The man plainly grows out of the baby. If the baby's skull has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull and brain it may be developed into a Shakespeare or a Dante. The possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth. And what determines the constitution with which the child is born? Surely it can be nothing but the constitution and circumstances of its parents. Whether I can be a great man, or cannot be more than a commonplace man, or a fool,—nay, whether I shall be man or monkey or an oak,—is settled before I have had any power of volition at all. Now, it is curious how, even at this early period, we are led to use delusive language. The difficulty is quaintly indicated in a remark by Jonathan Swift. The dean "hath often been heard to say" (says a fragment of autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of his parents' marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life". If they had not married, he apparently implies, he would have been born of other parents, and certainly would have felt it for life. What the word "he" means in that connection, is a puzzle for logicians. I fell into the difficulty myself, the other day, when I had occasion to say that a man's character had been influenced, both by his inheritance of certain qualities and by the later circumstances of his education. Having said this, which, I think, aimed at a real meaning, it occurred to me that the phrase was grossly illogical, and I shall be still obliged if any one will put it straight for me. The difficulty was, that I had used the same form of words to indicate the influence of a separable accident, and to describe one aspect of the essential character. To say that a man is influenced by his education is to say that he would have been different had he gone, for example, to another school. That is intelligible. But to say that "he" would have been different if he had been born of other parents is absurd, for "he" would not have been "he". He would not have existed at all. "He" means the man who has grown out of the baby with all its innate qualities; and not some, but all those qualities, the very essence of the man himself, is, of course, the product of his progenitors. Such phrases, in short, suggest the fancy that a man had a pre-existence somewhere, and went about like Er the Pamphylian in Plato's myth, selecting the conditions of his next stay upon earth. In that case, no doubt, there might be some meaning in the doctrine. The character of the future incarnation would depend upon the soul's choice of position. But as we know nothing about any pre-existent soul, we must agree that each of us starts as the little lump of humanity, every characteristic of which is determined by the characteristics of the parents, however much its later career may be affected by the independent powers of thought and volition which it develops. So much, it seems to me, must be granted on all hands, and is perhaps implicitly denied by no one.