Читать книгу Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog - Robert Blatchford - Страница 11

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For the scientific explanation of this fact I must refer you to The Germ Plasm, by Weissmann.

For our purposes it is enough to know that brothers and sisters do vary from each other, and that they so vary because the ancestral qualities are not evenly distributed amongst the "sperms" and the "ova." On this head our own knowledge and observation do not leave any room for doubt.

It is as if in the case of our marriage of Red-Blue and Black-Yellow there were three child-bottles, of which one got more red and yellow, one more blue and red, and one more yellow and blue than the others. So that the three brother-bottles would differ from their fore-parents and from each other.

And as it would be foolish to blame the second bottle for having less red in it than the first, so it is foolish to blame a human child for having less intellect or less industry than his brothers.

If you refer to the masterly description of the impregnation of the ova given in Haeckel's great work, The Evolution of Man, you will find that the heredity of brothers is largely a matter of accident. See the plate and explanation on page 130 in the first volume.

The "variation" in brothers and sisters is like the variation in the mixing of beads in our bottles.

It is as though we made several tartan plaids of the same four colours, but in different patterns.

It is like dealing hands of cards from a shuffled pack. There are four suits, but one hand may be rich in clubs, another in diamonds.

And who in a game of whist would blame his partner for holding no trumps in his hand? The partner could only play the trumps dealt out to him.

In no way can a child control the pre-natal shuffling or dealing of the ancestral pack.

Now, as to atavism, or breeding back. In the ancestral bottles called men and women there are millions of different kinds of beads. And it sometimes happens that a particular kind of bead (or quality) which has lain dormant for a long time—perhaps for a thousand years—will crop up in a new mixing that goes to make a "child-bottle," and so that child may be less like its own parents than like some ancestor who has been dead and forgotten for centuries.

In the case of the man with the seven ape muscles, mentioned by Darwin, the breeding back must have reached millions of years.

This "lying doggo," or inactive, of some hereditary trait, may be likened to the action of a kaleidoscope. We do not see all the fragments of coloured glass at every turn. But they are all there.

We do not see the same pattern twice; yet the patterns are made almost of the same colours and the same pieces.

And now I think we have got a clear idea of the meanings of the words "heredity," "variation," and "atavism," and the most timid reader will not be afraid of them any more.

There is no need, for our purpose, to wrestle with severe science. The reader may find for himself all about "pangenesis" in Darwin, and about the "germ plasm" in Weissmann. Here we will not tax our memories with such weird words as "biophors," "gemmules," "ids," "idents," and "determinants." Our similes of beads, tartans, and cards will serve us well enough.

The only objection to our similes is that they are too simple.

The mixture of bloods in descent is very much more extensive | than our mixture of cards or beads.

If we trace a child's descent back only four generations we find that he has no less than thirty fore-parents belonging to sixteen different families. Another generation would reach thirty-two families. If we go back to twenty generations we find the number of families drawn upon to be over a million.

But Darwin speaks of "thousands of generations." Does not! this suggest the wonderful possibilities of variation and atavism?

Imagine the variety of character and physique in a city like London. Then remember that each one of us is descended from more ancestors, and of much wider varieties, than all the population of London. And to hold a man answerable for his inheritance from those motley myriads of men and women is to hold him answerable for the natures and the actions of millions of human beings whom he never saw, of whom he never heard.

We all know that the different races of men differ from each other in colour, in features, and in capacity. We have only to think for a little of the Japanese, the Americans, the Spaniards, and the Swedes, to feel the full force of the term "racial characteristics."

We know that there is a great difference between the Irish and the Scotch. We know that there is a great difference between the Italians and the Dutch. We know the strongly marked peculiarities of the Jews and the Greeks.

Now, to blame a man for his nature is to blame him for not being like some other man. And how absurd it would be to blame a Norwegian for not being like a Jew, or a Gascon for not being like a Scot.

The Italians are wayward and impulsive: the Dutch are steadfast and cautious. Is it reasonable to blame the one for not being like the other?

If a child is born of an Italian father and an Irish mother, is it reasonable to expect that child to be as cool and methodical as the child of Dutch and Scottish parents?

Is it not the same with personal as with racial traits?

We have all heard of "Spanish pride," and of "Irish wit"; we have all heard of the pride of the Howards, and the genius of the Bachs.

To blame a Spaniard for being proud is to blame him for being born of Spanish parents. To blame a Howard for his pride is to blame him for being a son of the Howards.

Bach was a musical genius, Sheridan was witty, Nelson was brave, Rembrandt was a great painter, because there were golden beads in their ancestral bottles. But they did not put the golden beads there. They inherited them, as Lord Tomnoddy inherits his lands, his riches, and his plentiful lack of wit.

We should not expect the daughter of Carmen to be like the daughter of Jeannie Deans, nor the son of Rawdon Crawley to be like the son of Parson Adams. We should, indeed, no more think of praising a man for inheriting the genius or the virtues of his ancestors, than we should think of praising a man for inheriting his parents' wealth.

We have laughed over the Gilbertian satire on our patriotic boastfulness: