OCR Rendition - approximate

322 Hereditary Talent and Character. our own independent exertions? Will our children be born with more virtuous dispositions, if we ourselves have acquired virtuous habits? Or are we no more than passive transmitters of a nature we have received, and which we have no power to modify 7 There are but a few instances in which habit even seems to be inherited. The chief among them are such as those of dogs being born excellent pointers ; of the attachment to man shown by dogs ; and of the fear of man, rapidly learnt and established among the birds of newlydiscovered islands. But all of these admit of being accounted for on other grounds than the hereditary transmission of ' habits. Pointing is, in some faint degree, a natural. disposition of all dogs. Breeders have gradually improved upon it, and created the , race we now possess. There is nothing to show that the reason why dogs are born staunch pointers is that their parents had been broken into acquiring an artificial habit. So as regards the fondness of dogs for man. It is inherent to a great extent in the genus. The dingo, or wild dog of Australia, is attached to the man who has caught him when a puppy, and clings to him even although he is turned adrift to hunt for his own living. This quality in dogs is made more intense by the custom of selection. The savage dogs are lost or 'killed'; the tame ones are kept and bred from. Lastly, as regards the birds. As soon as any of their flock has learned to fear. I presume that its, frightened movements on the approach of man form a language that is rapidly and unerringly understood by the rest, old or young ; and, that, after a few repetitions of the signal, man becomes an object of welliemembered mistrust. , Moreover, just as natural selection has been shown to encourage love of man in domestic dogs, so it tends to encourage fear of man in all wild animals-the tamer varieties perishing owing to their misplaced con-: findence, and the wilder ones continuing their, breed. If we examine the question from the opposite side, a ,list of life-long habits in the parents might he adduced which leave no perceptible trace on their descendants. I cannot ascertain that the son of an old soldier learns his drill more quickly' than the son of an artizan. I am assured that. the sons of fishermen, whose ancestors have pursued the same calling time out of mind, are just as sea-sick as the sons of landsmen when they first go to sea. I cannot discover that the castes of India show signs of being naturally endowed with special aptitudes. If the habits of an individual are transmitted to his descendants, it is, as Darwin says, in a very small degree, and is hardly, if at all, traceable. -We shall therefore take an approximately correct view of the origin of our life, if we consider our own embryos to have sprung immediately from those., embryos whence our parents were developed, and these from the embryos of their parents, and so on for ever..- We should in this way look on the nature of mankind, and perhaps on' that of the whole animated creation, as one continuous system,, ever pushing out new branches in all directions, that variously interlace, and that bud into separate lives at every point of interlacement. This simile does not at all express the popular notion of life. . Most per-sons seem, to have a vague idea that a ndw element, specially fashioned in heaven, and not transmitted 'by simple descent, is introduced into the body of every newly-born infant. Such a notion is unfitted to stand upon any scientific, basis with which we are acquainted. It is impossible it should be true, unless there exists some property or quality in man that is not transmissible by descent. But the terms talent and character' are exhaustive : they include the whole of. man's spiritual nature so far as we are able to understand it. No other class of qualities is known. to exist, that we might suppose to have been interpolated from on high. Moreover, the idea is improbable from d priori considerations, because there is no other instance in which creative. power operates under our own observation at the