physical culture, amelioration of function, improvement of environment,
and so on? Let us give a practical point to what we have already said.

a) Every inheritance requires an appropriate nurture if it is to
realize itself in development. Nurture supplies the liberating stimuli
necessary for the full expression of the inheritance. A man's character
as well as his physique is a function of "nature" and of "nurture." In
the language of the old parable of the talents, what is given must be
traded with. A boy may be truly enough a chip of the old block, but how
far he shows himself such depends on "nurture." The conditions of
nurture determine whether the expression of the inheritance is to be
full or partial. It need hardly be said that the strength of an
(inherited) individuality may be such that it expresses itself almost in
the face of inappropriate nurture. History abounds in instances. As
Goethe said, "Man is always achieving the impossible." Corot was the son
of a successful milliner and prosperous tradesman, and he was thirty
before he left the draper's shop to study nature.

b) Although modifications do not seem to be transmitted as such, or in
any representative degree, there is no doubt that they or their
secondary results may in some cases affect the offspring. This is
especially the case in typical mammals, where there is before birth a
prolonged (placental) connection between the mother and the unborn
young. In such cases the offspring is for a time almost part of the
maternal body, and liable to be affected by modifications thereof, e.g.,
by good or bad nutritive conditions. In other cases, also, it may be
that deeply saturating parental modifications, such as the results of
alcoholic and other poisoning, affect the germ cells, and thus the
offspring. A disease may saturate the body with toxins and waste
products, and these may provoke prejudicial germinal variations.

c) Though modifications due to changed "nurture" do not seem to be
transmissible, they may be re-impressed on each generation. Thus
"nurture" becomes not less, but more, important in our eyes.

"Is my grandfather's environment not my heredity?" asks an American
author quaintly and pathetically. Well, if not, let us secure for
ourselves and for our children those factors in the "grandfather's
environment" that made for progressive evolution, and eschew those that
tended elsewhere.

Are modifications due to changed nurture not, as such, enta