t whose instance the change in the Fellowship system
was introduced.]

[Footnote 32: Conklyn, _Heredity and Environment in the
Development of Men_. Princeton University Press, 1915.]

VI. HEREDITY AND "ARRANGEMENT"

Some years ago, when I was delivering a lecture at the Cathedral Hall of
Westminster, in the course of the questioning which took place at the
termination of the discourse, which was on vitalism, I was asked by one
who signed his paper, "So and So, Atheist," "What would you say if you
saw a duck come out of a hen's egg?" I recognised at once the idea at
the back of the question and appreciated the fact that it had been asked
by one who, as some one has said, "called himself an advanced
free-thinker, but was really a very ignorant and vulgar person who was
suffering from a surfeit of the ideas of certain people cleverer than
himself." But, as a full discussion of the matter would have taken at
least as long as the lecture which I had just concluded, my reply was
that before I attempted to explain it I would wait to see the duck come
out of the hen's egg, since no man had as yet witnessed such an event. I
do not know whether my atheistical questioner was satisfied or not, but
I heard no more of him. But, after all, is it not a marvellous thing
that a duck never does come out of a hen's egg? If everything happens by
chance, as some would have us believe, why is it that a duck does not
occasionally emerge from a hen's egg? Surely this is a _miraculum_, a
thing to be wondered at, yet so common that it goes unnoticed, like many
other wonderful things which are also matters of common everyday
occurrence, such as the spinning of the earth on its own axis and its
course round the sun and through the heavens.

If we pursue this question further we shall begin to remember that
creatures more nearly related to one another also "breed true." The hen
and the duck are both birds, but they are not so nearly allied to one
another as the lion and the tiger, both of which are _Felidae_, or cats.
Yet no one ever expects that a tiger will be born of a lioness, or _vice
versa_. Further, the pug and the greyhound are both of them dogs: the
name _canis domesticus_ applies to both, and one would be distinguished
from the other in a scientific list as "Var. (_i.e._ variety) 'pug,'" or
"Var. 'greyhound.'" Yet one can imagine the surprise of a breeder if a
greyhound was born in his carefully selected and guarded kennel