OCR Rendition - approximate

hereditary Talent and Character. 327 constitution, that, if stone, the part of li ascribed to the bar course, there have b lines of relationship) i a grain in weight-an disproportioned to tl ascribed to ancient de of policy, I questio great family, or .a pri i more strength to his ing a wife who woul sons, than one who him the support of nexions. With the few bu exceptions we have specified above, we are still barbarians in our nature, and -we show it in a thousand ways. The children who dalble and dig in the dirt have inherited tl e instincts of untold generations of barbarian forefathers, who dug with their nails for a largo fraction of their liv . Our ancestors were grubbing by tl o hour, each day, to get at the roots they chiefly lived upon. They had to grub out pitfalls for their game, holes for their palisades and hut-poles, hiding places, and ovens. Man became a digging animal by nature; and so we see the delicately-reared children of our era very ready to revert to primeval habits. Instinct breaks out in them, just as it haired, boudoir-nurtu ribbon round its nee from the endearment sniff and revel in som carrion. It is a ommon the many creeds, that m imperfect nature. tions, but there is disposition that inca carrying his nobler p He sees that some p action is his duty, delight ; but his inclinations are fickle and base, and do not conform to his better judgment. The whole moral. nature of man is tainted with sin, which prevents him from doing the things he knows to be right. I venture to offer an explanation of this apparent anomaly, which seems perfectly satisfactory from a scientific point 'of view. It is neither more nor less than that the development of our nature, under Darwin's law of natural selection, has not yet overtaken the development of. our religious civilization. .Man was barbarous but yesterday, .and therefore it is not to be expected that the natural aptitudes of his-race should already have become moulded into accordance with his very recent advance. VVe men of the present centuries are like animals suddenly transplanted among new conditions of climate and of food : our instincts fail us under the altered circumstances. My theory is confirmed by the fact that the members of old civilizations are far less sensible than those newly converted from barbarism of their nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The conscience of a negro is aghast at his own wild, impulsive nature, and is easily stirred by a preacher, but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency of a steady-going Chinaman. The sense of original sin would show, according to my theory, not that man was fallen from a high estate, but that he was rapidly rising from a low one. It would therefore confirm the con= elusion that has been arrived at by., every independent line of ethnological research-that our forefathers were utter savages from the beginning ; and, that, after myriads of years of barbarism, our race has but very recently grown to be civilized and religious. ie wei%lis fourteen ni which e may be n (supposing, of en no additional only o'nerfiftieth of mount ludicrously o value popularly cent. As a stroke if the head of a ce) would not give osition, by'marrybear him talented ould merely bring high family con not insignificant I does in the Bilked spaniel, with a that runs away of its mistress, t road-side mess f o of moralists of is born with an has lofty aspiraweakness in his acitates him from rposesrinto effect. rticular course of nd should be his