There is no need, for our purpose, to wrestle with severe science. The reader may find for himself all about "pangenesis" in Darwin, and about the "germ plasm" in Weissmann. Here we will not tax our memories with such weird words as "biophors," "gemmules," "ids," "idents," and "determinants." Our similes of beads, tartans, and cards will serve us well enough.
The only objection to our similes is that they are too simple.
The mixture of bloods in descent is very much more extensive | than our mixture of cards or beads.
If we trace a child's descent back only four generations we find that he has no less than thirty fore-parents belonging to sixteen different families. Another generation would reach thirty-two families. If we go back to twenty generations we find the number of families drawn upon to be over a million.
But Darwin speaks of "thousands of generations." Does not! this suggest the wonderful possibilities of variation and atavism?
Imagine the variety of character and physique in a city like London. Then remember that each one of us is descended from more ancestors, and of much wider varieties, than all the population of London. And to hold a man answerable for his inheritance from those motley myriads of men and women is to hold him answerable for the natures and the actions of millions of human beings whom he never saw, of whom he never heard.
We all know that the different races of men differ from each other in colour, in features, and in capacity. We have only to think for a little of the Japanese, the Americans, the Spaniards, and the Swedes, to feel the full force of the term "racial characteristics."
We know that there is a great difference between the Irish and the Scotch. We know that there is a great difference between the Italians and the Dutch. We know the strongly marked peculiarities of the Jews and the Greeks.
Now, to blame a man for his nature is to blame him for not being like some other man. And how absurd it would be to blame a Norwegian for not being like a Jew, or a Gascon for not being like a Scot.
The Italians are wayward and impulsive: the Dutch are steadfast and cautious. Is it reasonable to blame the one for not being like the other?