ich we are born. Nothing is
commoner than the remark, that 'So and so is like his father or his
uncle'; and an aged person may not unfrequently note a resemblance in
a youth to a long-forgotten ancestor, observing that 'Nature sometimes
skips a generation.' It may be true also, that if we knew more about
our ancestors, these similarities would be even more striking to us.
Admitting the facts which are thus described in a popular way, we may
however remark that there is no method of difference by which they can
be defined or estimated, and that they constitute only a small part of
each individual. The doctrine of heredity may seem to take out of our
hands the conduct of our own lives, but it is the idea, not the fact,
which is really terrible to us. For what we have received from our
ancestors is only a fraction of what we are, or may become. The
knowledge that drunkenness or insanity has been prevalent in a
family may be the best safeguard against their recurrence in a future
generation. The parent will be most awake to the vices or diseases in
his child of which he is most sensible within himself. The whole of life
may be directed to their prevention or cure. The traces of consumption
may become fainter, or be wholly effaced: the inherent tendency to vice
or crime may be eradicated. And so heredity, from being a curse, may
become a blessing. We acknowledge that in the matter of our birth, as in
our nature generally, there are previous circumstances which affect
us. But upon this platform of circumstances or within this wall of
necessity, we have still the power of creating a life for ourselves by
the informing energy of the human will.

There is another aspect of the marriage question to which Plato is a
stranger. All the children born in his state are foundlings. It never
occurred to him that the greater part of them, according to universal
experience, would have perished. For children can only be brought up in
families. There is a subtle sympathy between the mother and the child
which cannot be supplied by other mothers, or by 'strong nurses one or
more' (Laws). If Plato's 'pen' was as fatal as the Creches of Paris, or
the foundling hospital of Dublin, more than nine-tenths of his children
would have perished. There would have been no need to expose or put
out of the way the weaklier children, for they would have died of
themselves. So emphatically does nature protest against the destruction
of the family.

What Pl