The whole theory concerning heredity and its marvellous influence for good or evil is a nauseous draught for mankind to swallow. No wonder we revolt instinctively from a doctrine that charges tender parents with transmitting an evil heritage to the offspring they passionately love. “Although many important books draw attention to the facts, as far as they are ascertained, these momentous facts have as yet made no impression on the general mind.” (_Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness_, p. 329.) This statement is no longer true. It was written in 1884, and since then immense strides have been made in the realization of the action of heredity. The subject is frequently and persistently brought forward now, and urged upon the attention of the public. Zola’s _mère idée_ is not found only in French fiction, the new Russian school of fiction is permeated by it; and even in England some novelists, following in the footsteps of George Eliot, are assuming a scientific attitude towards life, and the facts of heredity are not ignored. Moreover, in science and in all high-class criticism of life the doctrine of heredity is directly taught. Apart from purely literary work, the examination of criminal statistics as a whole, and the practical observations of physicians, doctors, dentists, schoolmasters, poor-guardians, systematized and made public at congresses and stored in scientific handbooks so inexpensive as to be well within reach of all students—these, I say, combine to impress upon the general mind the conviction that racial degeneracy is a palpable fact; and that inheritance is prime factor in the degenerating process. And recently indeed a suspicion of danger in over-estimating this factor has been publicly expressed. Whereas formerly, it is said, a child was supposed to be born with a mind like a clean sheet of paper, on whose fair surface we might write what we chose, opinion points in the present day to an opposite extreme, viz., this, that the hereditary tendencies born with the child determine its future career, and that education cannot modify this destiny in any essential respect. Now, to disallow the importance of education as also a prime factor in progress is an error of judgment; but so long as the human race continues scourged by sickness, martyred by pain, demoralized by disease and innate debility, and decimated by premature death, it is not possible for thinkers to over-estimate the profound significance for weal or woe of this question of heredity.