touches all the
questions suggested and many more. Even if freedom of action is to some
degree assumed, the question still remains as to the degree of guilt in
fixing punishment and responsibility. The question involves the make-up
of the man, his full heredity, so far as it can be known.

Most of every man's heredity is hidden in the mist and darkness of the
past. He inherits more or less directly through an infinite number of
ancestors, reaching back to primitive man and even to the animals from
which he came. The remote ancestry is, of course, usually not so
important as that immediately behind him. Still, plainly, his form and
structure and the details of his whole machine, including the
marvelously delicate mechanism of the brain and nervous system, are
heritages of the very ancient past. Neither are the processes of
inheritance well understood nor subject to much control. Often in the
making of the man Nature resorts to some "throw-back" which reproduces
the ancient heritage. This can be seen only in general resemblances and
behavior, for the genealogical tree of any family is very short and very
imperfectly known, and the poor have no past. In three or four
generations at the most the backward trail is lost and his family merged
with the species of which he forms but a humble part.

Enough, however, is known of ancestry and the infinite marks of
inheritance on every structure as well as enough of the reaction of the
human machine to the varied environment that surrounds it, to make it
clear that if one were all-seeing and all-wise he could account in
advance for every action of every man. More than this, he could see in
the original, fertilized cell, all its powers, defects and
potentialities and could, in the same manner, look down through the
short years during which the human organism, grown from the cell, shall
have life and movement, and could see its varied environment. If one
could see this with infinite wisdom, he could infallibly tell in advance
each step that the machine would take and infallibly predict the time
and method of its dissolution. To be all-knowing is to be
all-understanding, and this is infinitely better than to be
all-forgiving.

To get this knowledge of the past of each machine is the duty and work
of the tribunal that passes on the fate of a man. It can be done only
imperfectly at best. The law furnishes no means of making these
judgments. All it furnishes is a tribunal where the con