Читать книгу Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog - Robert Blatchford - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Heredity is "descent," or "breed." Heredity, as the word is here used, means those qualities which are handed down from one generation to the next. It means those qualities which a new generation inherits from the generation from whom it descends.

It means all that "is bred in the bone." If a man inherits a Grecian nose, a violent temper, well-knit muscles, a love of excitement, or a good ear for music, from his father or mother, that quality or feature is part of his heredity. It is "bred in him."

Every quality a child possesses at the moment of birth, every quality of body or of mind, is inherited from his parents and their ancestors. And the whole of those qualities—which are the child—are what we call "heredity."

No child brings into the world one single quality of body or mind that has not been handed down to it by its ancestors.

And yet no two children are exactly alike, and no child is exactly like any one of its forbears.

This difference of children from each other and from the parent stock is called "variation."

Hundreds of books and papers have been written about "variation," and to read some of them one might suppose variation to be a very difficult subject. But it is quite simple, and will not give us any trouble at all. Let us see.