The potency of heredity is obscured to uncritical examination by the fact that that which is inheritable is that which was innate, inherent or germinal in the parent, as we shall shortly see. We, however, are apt to compare the child with the parent, who has perhaps been much modified by circumstances, so that the resemblance between father and child may seem to be slight. Yet if we could bring back before us that father, as he was, say at the age of two, and compare him with his two-year-old child, we should perhaps be astonished by the resemblance. But we see the acquirements or acquired characters of the parent; make no distinction between them and his inherent characters; fail to discover these acquired characters in his child;--and discount the importance of heredity. Then, again, the eugenist may be utterly confounded if he estimates the parental value of an individual without reference to this limitation of heredity. Here is a man of culture and accomplishment; his children, then, will presumably tend to be cultured and accomplished. But every kind of advantage that forethought and love and money can afford may have been showered upon that man. So far as native endowment was concerned, he may have indeed been far below mediocrity. Now it is native endowment alone that he can transmit, and our eugenic estimate of him is therefore erroneous and will lead to disappointment. It is impossible to lay too great stress upon the truth that in all eugenic plans or demands or practices we are assuming the fact of inheritance, and that therefore it is our first business to distinguish absolutely between that which tends to be inherited and that which, on the other hand, is never inherited. Yet again, this distinction is of almost incalculable social moment in so far as it affects the process of selection actually occurring in society. This, perhaps, has not been adequately recognised. One may repeat a former statement of this point, which is cardinal for the eugenist:--