The Physiologist as a Preacher
45 y Art. IV.? :Author: J. Milner Fothergill, M.D., M.R.C.P. ” The wages of sin is death.”
In essaying to preach from a physiological standpoint, it is not for one moment assumed that preaching from other standpoints must be abandoned. For the present, however, all other aspects than the physiological one are left in abeyance. This is abso- lutely necessary 5 but no reader must entertain the suspicion even that the other standpoints are forgotten, or under-esti- mated. It is essential to be clear about this, else misconception will, and must follow. If the reader commence with a false or a wrong impression, it will warp his judgment all through, and vitiate his conclusions; and I am anxious that the matter shall have as much fair play as the diversities of human thought will permit. Consequently the ground must be cleared of all sources of error, so that the superstructure?whatever it may be, good or bad?shall be seen distinctly, and not here and there be obscured by the presence of other matter. The origin of this paper is the fear expressed by many worthy persons that the progress of the knowledge of the natural man, and especially the growth of physiology, tends towards a practical infidelity, which will loosen the bonds of morality, and hand humanity over to an unrestricted hedonism. Pure and unmitigated self-indulgence, it is asserted, is the certain and inevitable outcome of physiological knowledge, with theistic tendencies. If man is the product of evolution, and the charac- ter of the individual is formed for him by his ancestors, why then, it is said, he is released from all responsibility of action; his life here is hedonism so far as is attainable, and hereafter he becomes simply a log for hell fire. Such, without any rhetorical display, is the view taken by many persons of the future of humanity. The objections of these persons to the pursuit of the knowledge of the natural man are based on the view that such knowledge tends to undermine practical morality, and to turn the aims of humanity towards mere sensuous indulgence. But are the facts with them ? I believe that the creed of the physiologist is the most practical, the gravest, and, in certain senses, the grimmest that has yet been evolved in the history of humanity. Instead of luring man into a conviction of irre- sponsibility, it points out to him the grave responsibility of every action, and the impossibility of escaping the consequences of deeds done. Just as he knows that a breach of the physical law of gravitation is followed by consequences of an unpleasant character, so he is conscious that a breach of moral laws is also followed by results that are painful. A man falls from a house, and breaks his leg in consequence ; a man gives himself up to self-indulgence, and finds himself unfitted for heroic action. A man resides in a neighbourhood where all sanitary laws are set at defiance, and a physical deterioration follows, which is manifested in a diminished resistance to epidemic disease; a man lives in a society of persons of lax principle, and his psychical deterioration manifests itself in lowered power of resistance to temptation when it offers itself in some tangible concrete form. The man who lives amidst foul physical sur- roundings presents little resistance to the stroke of cholera ; the man who lives amongst gamblers and courtesans finds the temptation to commit fraud too strong for him under the pres- sure of impecuniosity. To the physiologist the one is just as much a natural consequence as the other. He knows that just as the man who resides in a filthy abode is liable to be attacked with typhoid fever, or that he who lives in a malarial district is subject to the probability of ague; so he who lives freely on large quantities of animal food, with stimulating drinks, in hot climates will suffer from biliary disorders from which the frugal and self-denying are free. He also knows equally well that a life of self-indulgence leaves the individual in his old age a moral wreck, deprived of all capacity for noble action. The deterioration is as clear in the one case as in the other. In each the results are the consequences of actions, the inevitable outcomes of a line of practice, or of conduct. He knows per- fectly well that while such is the rule there are exceptions in certain instances. Some individuals escape?why and how need not be discussed here, as the pursuit of this part of the subject might lead to divisions of opinion; and it is essayed here to keep strictly to that on which there can be unanimity of opinion. Possibly, as we shall see, the inherited constitution has an equal influence over the result in each case.
It is easy to avoid all doubtful questions, all debatable ground ; there is almost an infinity of space where there can be perfect agreement. Let us review, in the first place, the results of indulgence in the pleasures of the table?the gratification of the palate. Too great indulgence in sapid substances depraves the taste, until the ordinary foods lose their attractiveness, and all the cook’s skill is taxed to give to food a flavour which will render it acceptable to the vitiated palate. Self-imposed hun- ger and sustained exercise can alone restore the primitive taste for food, and endow the gustatory nerves with their pristine sensitiveness. The only method of restoration attainable is by practising the very opposite of the natural inclinations. Or if the practice or habit of indulgence is continued by dint of an unusually powerful digestion, and no failure of appetite or digestive power comes to the rescue, then the habitually over- worked kidneys fail to depurate the blood of its waste matters, and gout, in some of its Protean forms, is the consequence.
The very dyspepsia of which so many complain, is the means par excellence by which graver maladies are avoided. A clergy- man of a very gouty family, whose brothers had all died before him from gouty ailments, said truthfully enough, ” I have been a dyspeptic for fifty years. Thank God for it! ” Even in cases where the individual himself escapes, his children have to take the consequences, as we shall see they very commonly do, ere this enquiry is ended. ” The children of gouty parents ought more especially to follow the hygienic and dietetic laws laid down in these pages if they wish to escape much suffering. As a rule they ought to be all but water-drinkers throughout life ; they have to pay the penalty of their progenitors’ excesses or dietetic errors.” (” Nutrition,” by J. Henry Bennett.) The transference of the sins of the father to the children is sternly true.
Again, take the instance of indulgence in drinks which contain alcohol. Can anyone be blind to the consequences of indulgence to excess in alcoholic drinks, in the form of physical degeneration, of early decay ; or to the effects of sustained indulgence upon the character of the individual ? The phrase a ” drunken blackguard ” is indicative enough of the moral degradation which results from chronic indulgence. What effect has drunkenness upon the progeny of the drunkard ? Even where idiocy is not reached, there are evidences of the evil wrought by the father in the mental characteristics of his children. The children of the drunkard are also suffering the penalty of inheritance.
Or, again, a man gives himself up to sexual indulgence, and, whether married or single it matters not, lives a life of hedonism. Does this lead to elevation or degradation of character ? Is this the training adapted to develope the highest qualities, or does intellectual languor or decay accompany the physical prostration which is so induced ? Again, we see that excessive indulgence leads to satiety, and the capacity is in many lost, only to be recovered by a long interval of abstinence. Mere hedonism leads to degradation, mental and physical, in those who indulge to excess therein?
A dire effect, by one of Nature’s laws, Unchangeably connected with its cause. The temptation to avoid what is unpleasant by a lie is one which swiftly grows, and soon lays the mental structure in ruin. The drunkard, the glutton, and the satyr do not present a more terrible spectacle of decadence or monstrosity than the liar. The temptation to resort to falsehood is ever more and more irresistible, and the habitual liar is one of the most offensive of the objectionable morbid specimens of humanity. Once the fatal facility of lying established, the downward progress of the individual is inevitable. It does not follow that the individual may not be wealthier or more prosperous for his facility. This is very possible. If becoming wealthy were to be the sole end and aim of humanity, then wealth would take the place of everything, and the lie would not only be condoned, but looked up to as a clear means to an end. But the pursuit of wealth is not the unalloyed satisfaction, when attained, that some seem to imagine, as we shall shortly see. ” No amount of repentance for lying can deprive lies of their tendency to weaken the mutual confidence of men, and thus to dissolve society. The lie, once told, must work its effects, as surely as the stone dropped into water must give forth its arrested motion in rippling circles.”? Fiske.
But even in the event of the lie being successful and re- maining undiscovered, the character must undergo deterioration from the consciousness of resort to falsehood. The remem- brance of the lie lies away amidst the accumulated residue of the memory, and taints all around it. It is as impossible to have perfect mental health with a diseased spot remaining persistently, as it is to have perfect bodily health with a morbid growth existing in the organism. There may be apparent perfect health ; but time will reveal the actual facts.
Lying, or the tendency to it, may be handed down from father to son, like any other taint, and seems to be a characteristic of some families, and to run through every member of it in more or less thoroughness. In one family with which the writer is acquainted such is the case ; and, though the favourite form is untruthful boasting, in temptation it takes other forms; nor does there seem any strong sense of shame when the lie is discovered. The mental degradation is such that the normal sense of shame is either not induced at all, or, if so, not to any perceptible extent.
It is the transmission of qualities by inheritance which is the most appalling side of wrong-doing to the observant physio- logist. It is the grim fact that a man’s offspring must take and endure the consequences of his deeds, that evokes grave thought, and causes a sense of horror at certain sins. If the wrong-doer always bore the consequences himself, the certitude of these consequences coming would be more deterrent to the doer, though less sternly significant to others. Just as a man is a spendthrift, and thereby his children are reduced to poverty, so the gourmand leaves his children to suffer for his actions in the form of a gouty taint which necessitates the greatest self-denial on their part throughout life; they, in fact, have to exercise the self-denial their progenitors lacked, or to suffer in consequence. The drunkard leaves even a more terrible inheritance behind him, for he too often leaves to his progeny an impaired or im- perfect nervous system, which lacks the power to resist tempta- tion to like indulgence, even if the wish to do so exists. The degradation of the intellectual centres, which is the certain outcome of protracted alcoholic indulgence in the individual, is inherited by his children in the form of a vitiated constitution. If persons indulge in excessive and undue sexual intercourse, their offspring are apt to exhibit in their temperament the passions amidst which they took their genesis. The erotic ten- dencies of the bastard are well known to all observers. It is this transference of consequences from parent to child, this pro- traction of sequelae which is so strongly borne in upon the physiologist, and which gives him a truer insight into the nature of sin than anyone else can possess, unless they, too, have transferred their belief in a dogmatic statement to an obser- vant attitude which will fully bear out that belief. The decla- ration ” I shall visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,” finds, in the researches of the physiologist, the strongest and most convincing proofs of the truth embodied therein. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, and far beyond them. The consequences of wrong-doing are felt by the wrong-doer’s progeny as long as there are any of them to bear them 5 unless that progeny have set in action new forces to counterbalance those already set in action before them, and so a new equilibrium found?so that they are once more in harmony with their surroundings. There is no destroying the potentiality of force; it must be met and neutralised, or counterbalanced, by setting some new force in action.
But there are many matters beyond those gross and palpable ones just given for the sake of illustration, on which there is no difficulty presented to any mind in drawing the right deduc- tions. There are many comparatively innocent aims or objects of ambition whose consequences are not those originally sought. A keener attention than is ordinarily given to the subject is required to see how the consequences are brought about in these cases. For instance, a man is given to athletic pursuits and to muscular exertion. There is nothing wrong per se in this, but it is found that such pursuits tend to restrain the intellec- tual development, and the athlete’s offspring have in them the inherited tendencies to unintellectual energy.
Again, there does not seem anything intrinsically pernicious in the pursuit of wealth, and with many now-a-days the self- made man of the people, who has risen by his own efforts, is the type of what man ought to be. But there is a great deal to be urged on the per contra side of this matter. It may be dis- puted most strongly how far the pursuit of wealth is either an unalloyed pleasure, or, when attained, an unqualified advantage. A man who gains wealth swiftly is being brought into new sur- roundings as rapidly as his balance waxes at his bankers. His family aspire to a higher social grade as their wealth increases, and they get the entree into a circle or environment quite different from that they previously occupied. Happiness con- sists in being in full harmony with the environment. But the adaptability of the individual to new surroundings may not be in proportion to the growth of wealth, and then the amount of happiness is restricted. To follow the individual himself. In order to acquire wealth speedily he has to push business, to grow less and less perfectly scrupulous, to drive harder bargains, to be less considerate for the feelings of others ; in fact, when the ideal is attained, and an estate is purchased, when the otium cam dignitate is about to be grasped, it turns out to be a phantom. The whole training of the individual has in reality tended in the very opposite direction, and probably the sense of unhappiness is never so vivid as when the coveted position is gained, and the would-be gentleman discovers that he is not, arid never will be, the gentleman he had ever craved to become. For harmony with his new surroundings something more and beyond the mere, command of wealth is essential; and that something is visibly wanting, and but too clearly unattainable. In fact, the more rapidly wealth has been attained, the more thoroughly has the training of the individual been away from, and not towards the goal of his wishes. The more strenuous his struggles the more irksome the life of ease ; the less the consi- deration for the feelings of others involved in the rapid acquisi- tion of wealth, the less the capacity to take on this essential characteristic of a gentleman. Having acquired the position craved for, it is found to be far from comfortable, as regards the individual. Now, as to his family. He has probably looked forward to what has been done by a small proportion of others, viz., to the founding of a family who would take up and keep a position in the social world. It is undoubtedly true that the position won by self-made men has been held by their descen- dants for generations; but only in comparatively few instances. It is given but to few to possess that adaptability to new surroundings which, as has been said before, is essential to happiness, to self-contentment. Too commonly this adapt- ability is wanting, and the family maintains an equivocal position by a profuse expenditure. Not unfrequently, too, there co-exists a false pride, so called, and the son of the self-made man strives to hold himself aloof from his source of revenue, and the business or concern is neglected, and the profits reaped by those who are interested in it; or it gradually falls to pieces from sheer obsolescence. At the same time, there is a heavy expenditure; for as it is their ambition to be wealthy, so these persons can feel little or no happiness outside a large expen- diture : their sense of satisfaction is in strict proportion to the cost of each pleasure. Consequently, sooner or later this brings about the natural results, and the heavy or increased expendi- ture, with a fixed or decreasing revenue, dissipates the wealth on which their position was founded; and the grandchild slips back into the position his grandfather rose from. In manufac- turing districts it has become almost a proverb that wealth will not last over three generations! And why ? Because other qualities than the possession of wealth are requisite to the adaptation of the individual to new surroundings, which that wealth cannot purchase. Unless the individual who aspires to work and earn a fortune in order that he may taste the sweets of affluence, and that his children may live long in the land to enjoy what he has toiled for for them, possesses intrinsic qualities beyond mere money-making powers ; instead of being on the surest road to happiness, he is in all probability on the track to certain disappointment and bitter mortification. He has fatally mistaken his potential powers and the requirements of the position to which he aspires, and defeat and humiliation are the necessary results.
It is clear, then, that the pursuit of wealth is a delusion and a snare as a means of attaining happiness. When the nature is so low as to rest perfectly satisfied with the mere possession of wealth, without making any changes in the surroundings, then happiness, such as it is, may be attained; but to such a person the term ” miser ” is applied?i.e., this person is miser- able, is unhappy beyond all others, as the term implies. This, however, means that he is miserable according to other people’s conception of happiness, not according to his own.
Looked at from this point of view, the acquisition of wealth is far from being a sure means of securing happiness. In fact, can there be many roads that are bo essentially delusive, so absolutely lacking in the potential elements of success, contain- ing so certainly elements of necessary failure, as that of the accumulation of wealth for the attainment of self-satisfaction or contentment ? There have been, and undoubtedly are, those who do possess the other faculties beyond the mere money- making power, and they attain their ends with more or less mixed satisfaction to themselves, and capacity to retain their position on the part of their descendants. But they are the minority, and the very small minority too ! No wonder, then, that there are those who see beyond, and disbelieve the lying promise of wealth, and who recognise clearly the fact that the acquisition of wealth is not the road to contentment. The man who aspires to make a fortune and found a family, as the phrase runs, should first ask himself gravely, if he would avoid bitter disappointment, how far he himself and after him his children are fitted to the new surroundings he seeks. Will they be able to withstand the temptations of their new position, or to take upon them the higher duties which an elevated position, in the way of example to others, entails, which wealth and leisure bring with them ; or will they merely regard wealth as the means to the gratification of their passions ? If they possess no higher feelings than the mere pursuit of hedonism, no further ambition than a handsome house, a stylish equipage, and a sensuous life, then certainly they will soon recede from their new position; and in sinking back they will experience in misery the equivalent of their progenitors’ satisfaction in making the ascent. If these other and higher qualities are wanting, probably much misery and pain would be avoided if the aspirant to wealth remained in the ranks to which he primitively belongs.
The possession of the musical faculty is often a source of great satisfaction and of no little pleasure to its owner; indeed, I am not quite sure that the tendency amongst musical persons is not towards regarding themselves as rather superior to those who do not possess this faculty. And yet it is probably true that any great development of this capacity, especially if there co-exist a decided inclination to indulge in the gratification afforded by listening to music, and undue time be so spent, is accompanied by a corresponding neglect or deficiency in other directions. The time so given up to music, whether as practice to maintain efficiency, or as sheer pleasure, is afforded at the expense of other culture; and musical families, though usually most amiable and pleasant, are not uncommonly poorly and imperfectly informed. Their fancied superiority is purchased at the cost of more solid attainments. If the gratification, the sensuous pleasure derived from this possession of the faculty, be kept within limited bound?, so as not to trench upon other more important matters, little harm is done; but unlimited indulgence not only encroaches upon the time, but unfits the individual for graver and more important study. Even the pursuit of knowledge and pure intellectual culture has got its drawbacks of the most serious character. It would seem at first that this, the purest of all forms of occupation self-enforced, would be free from disadvantages, and be a simple, unalloyed good. And yet it seems that those who * pursue knowledge are par excellence the martyrs of humanity. By such pursuit their race is cut off. Gregg terms it ” the tendency of cerebral development to lessen fecundity ” ; and it appears that he and Herbert Spencer, quite independently of each other, noted the general evidence furnished of the limited progeny of intellectual nations, and the tendency to sterility in highly cultivated beings. The demands of the brain in sustained culture tax the system so much, that there remains an insufficient amount to maintain the efficiency of the repro- ductive system. Sir Isaac Newton throughout life was con- tinent; and it is asserted by American writers that the increasing sterility of American women is largely due to the excessive demands of the over-taxed nervous system. The well-read intellectual women of the North-Eastern States are not fertile as a rule, and the fecundity for which the early settlers in these regions were so remarkable has passed away, and the descendants of the pilgrims of the Mayflower are, if we are to trust to the statements of some of the most influ- ential American writers, a perishing people. They have been? for we must learn to speak of them in a past tense?a noble people, and their expatriation in defence of their individual rights was followed by the grandest experiment ever tried, viz. that of a state founded on the rights of every man to have a voice in its government. But they did not restrict this right to themselves; they courageously extended it to the Celt, degraded by centuries of subordination to the ruling Saxon; to the imperfectly developed Negro, in the infancy of civilisation; and seem about to extend it to the Mongol, almost a human cry- stal from centuries of a static condition. Yet it would seem that this very intellectual grandeur has its consequences in sterility, and that their mental activity is a direct cause of their decay. This is indeed a melancholy and sombre fact, that high cerebral development is fatal to the continuance of the race. One would have thought that so pure an aspiration might have been freed from such serious consequences; but it is not so. It would appear that there are persons who store up energy, and others who manifest it. The healthy, stalwart, but not too mentally active country families, are those which furnish the men who themselves manifest great mental activity; they are the storers up ot energy in a static form; they do not manifest much force themselves, but they furnish the organisms which manifest it actively. The manifestors of force, on the other hand, are active-minded, energetic creatures; they are, as it were, the finished products, and they perish when their work is done, leaving but rarely progeny behind them. This is not only seen in continent bachelors like Newton, who die child- less ; it is seen in the increasing sterility of active-minded families and races, in the tendency towards extermination by diminishing fertility. This is, however, but what we might expect. Compare the marvellous fecundity of some of the lower forms of life, or even of some fishes, with the few chil- dren of the most prolific races of men. The more finished the product, the more sparingly is it produced.
The system of education which is pursued by civilised nations is inimical to much fecundity. During the period of most active growth, at the time of the evolution of puberty, when the changes go on which give the organism its reproduc- tive power, then the system is most heavily taxed by repeated demands upon it in the form of educational pursuits ; and the growing girl becomes a well-grown but not too intellectual matron if the reproductive instinct keep the upper hand ; but, if the nervous system prevail, then the organism is partially blighted, and the girl becomes a bright intellectual companion for man, but is apt to be a barren bride. These, as said before, are as truly martyrs to humanity as are those who have voluntarily perished to promote the welfare of their faith. It is, indeed, but another phase of faith, another form of self- sacrifice. Humanity may be doomed to reproduce itself from its less perfect forms ; but it benefits by those higher organisms who perish in its behalf.
It would seem, then, that mediocrity, inherited and self- promoted, is the only safe line for man to adopt. Every form of activity seems to bear with it an inherent drawback, which is more or less fatal to the continuation of the species. And so it is if we speak of the individual, but not if we speak of the race. Mediocrity can only be maintained in the race by its containing every form of individual. The intel- lectual being, therefore, is as essentially necessary to this mediocrity as are the lower forms of humanity. Mediocrity of the race is not maintained by mediocrity in every one of its constituent units.
The physiologist, looking at the human organism as but one link of a chain, sees in this chain the ” man.” Then he sees distinctly that the wages of sin is death ; that the race of the individual who sins must die ; that he shall lose his share in the great human heritage by the extinction of his race. It is but the extension of the idea from the individual to his progeny, and then the physiologist is in the most perfect harmony with the ethical philosopher and the theologian. If a race of beings persist in living in defiance of what we under- stand as moral laws, or, in other words, out of harmony with their surroundings, then they will perish inevitably: their only chance of preservation lies in their developing, more or less by the efforts of the individual, a new equilibrium betwixt them and the environment; or, in other words again, a repentance which shall extend to works. It is clear to the physiologist that ” the soul that sinneth it shall die,” and that ” the wicked man shall perish,” if the extension given above but be admitted. If a man commit offences against the laws of his Creator, he must take the consequences which will follow therefrom. And to these conclusions we are shut up. No contrition, no re- pentance can do away with the persistence of force. All re- pentance is fruitless which does not call out an equal force to neutralise that of the past. The consequences can only thus be averted. If not so averted, then the only escape for man is to die before the consequential results of his actions have had time to come home to him; and in doing so to leave behind him no progeny, no children or children’s children on whom they may fall. Such are the plain teachings of physiological knowledge; and if some worthy persons think this a demoralising and degrading creed, tending to deliver up man to his lusts and his passions, they are welcome to their belief, but they must not ask me to share it.
There is a still more serious aspect than this of man being but a link in a chain of beings, and which points out man’s responsi- bility in the gravest and grimmest form. It is the influence exercised by each individual over his progeny. We are all of us the outcomes of the co-operation of countless ancestral forces extending back into almost illimitable time. Each of us in his turn will exercise an influence, however small?and ultimately perhaps imperceptible, but nevertheless still there?upon his progeny far away into the distant future. Every act of self- development by volition will excite vibrations which will not be lost for ages, if, indeed, ever at all. The cultivation of the individual will exercise a distinct influence over his offspring for good or evil. As the influence exercised by the progenitor nearest in time is the most potent over the individual, so this influence will be most potent over his children. The influence, consequently, is the strongest upon those to whom each is most personally attached. It ia diminished as time goes on, and as other influences spring up and obscure it?as other forces come into play. It is a serious thing, then, for the man who assumes the responsibilities of marriage and reproduction, to consider all that he is taking upon himself. He may no longer then do that which seemeth unto him good, feeling that the consequences of his actions will perish with him. He has incurred a wider responsibility in calling into being organisms which will in their turn feel what he has done, and perhaps suffer for his actions. Whatever his self-culture, so will they be modified. As the deeds of his ancestors influence and affect him, so will his actions in turn tell on them. If their heritage will be a sound body with a healthy mind, free from the taint of sin, then he may confidently exercise the rights of manhood. But if a deteriorated physique, a depraved mind, and selfish indulgence are to be their inheritance, then surely it were well that the man should die in time; for of all his sins the calling into being of other organisms will be the gravest, the worst, and the least defensible. Death, indeed, would be a good, and not an evil.
This gradual formation of character, by the slow accumu- lations of the race, involves incalculable responsibility in the being who is, or intends to be, a link betwixt the past and the future. The past is not dead, even though the poet assert it. It exercises its influence, unostentatiously it may be, upon the present and the future. Our actions may die with us, if we leave no descendants. But to each man who aspires to connect the past with the future this question must come home. How, and in what direction, shall I modify my children, and affect their inherited character? Their inherited character?the product not only of forces acting upon their progenitors, but of the self-education of each ancestor?will determine their line of conduct in the different affairs of life. Under whatever cir- cumstances placed they will have marked tendencies to move in certain directions, to act in a certain manner. The different arrangement and aggregation of forces in families constitute family characteristics. In one the tendency is to great activity, in another to procrastinate, while in a third there exists a marked inclination to resort to the lie, to untruth, in emer- gencies or in difficulties. Each form of conduct is determined by the arrangement of conflicting forces in the different individuals; each indeed moves along the line of least resist- ance. But what is the line of least resistance in one, is not that line in another. The course which recommends itself to one is perhaps, of all alternatives, the most distasteful, the most impossible to the other. It is a terrible subject for thought this consideration?that all beings in determining their actions and their conduct are moving in the line of least resistance. Whether it is in ordinary action, just like the welling over of water in the easiest direction, or whether we are acting under high emotional tension, like the explosion of nitro-glycerine, the cleavage will and ever must be in the line of least resistance. When we are acted upon by conflicting forces, tempted by varying objects, pressed upon by hopes and fears, restrained on one side by duty, led in other directions by passion, the line of action will be at last in the line of least resistance. The direction will be different with different persons ; it will not always be identical in the same individual; at one time one force will act more powerfully than another, or the impressionability to different forces will vary. In strongly marked characters the action will vary least; in the courageous the direction will be ever towards heroic conduct; in the faint- hearted, towards cowardice. But what, after all, enables one person to be courageous so as to be capable of heroic actions, and what makes the other a coward ? The character of each is, in its broad outlines, and often in its finer lines, the outcomes of forces acting upon their progenitors for a thousand years. Base action in the past?maybe the outcome of a wounded conscience?will influence the decision in the present; and the choice of the individual betwixt good or evil will turn upon some inherited trait of character, for which he is not primarily responsible. But if he is in so far irresponsible for his own action, he is in just so far responsible for the action of some descendant, whose conduct will be influenced by his self- culture. Self-education tends to modify inherited tendencies; and by unceasing effort other forces may be brought to bear upon a certain facet of the general character, until a radical change may be brought about. A man may be naturally a coward, and afraid of death ; i.e. his inherited instincts and feel- ings are to avoid death almost at any cost. But he is married, and has children, and when he sees these objects of his affec- tions threatened, he faces death heroically. A new set of forces are brought to bear upon him through his emotions; and without these new forces his conduct would have been quite different, and he would have fled instead of fought. Each man is thoroughly responsible for his own treatment of his inherited characteristics. As the progress of the race onwards has been achieved by slow accretions and the advance of each genera- tion of individuals upon the past, so in the formation of the character of a family each link of the chain of beings has an influence which can be exercised for good or evil. He may ignominiously give way to lower impulses and exercise a degrading influence, or he may struggle with natural tendencies so as to diminish their potency in his progeny, and so lead to improvement in his descendants. By his own conduct and actions he is, albeit unconsciously, influencing theirs for good or evil. Each individual is exercising an influence over the direction of the line of least resistance, in which his descendants will move; and so incurs the gravest responsibility as to the ultimate consequences of his conduct. This is, indeed, a matter for serious thought; not only may the self-education of the man materially influence his own action, but it will neces- sarily give a direction to the action of his progeny. This influence over the conduct of his descendants is unavoidable; it is inseparable from reproduction. ” The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” What- ever may be a man’s inherited proclivities, it is his bounden duty to hand them over to his children the better, and not the worse for him. In calling children into being he should bear in mind the line of least resistance ; and should do his best to make sure that their movements in ordinary matters, as well as in times of trial and temptation, shall be along a line which shall take a respectable, even if unequal to an heroic direction.
It is, indeed, this influence which each individual must exercise over his descendants that gives to action, and to the sources of action, their grave responsibility. The individual, in determining his own action, is adding his individual factor to his inherited characteristics, and posterity will inevitably be influenced thereby. The wicked man?the man who outrages the laws of his Creator?must die, and die childless too, if he desire to avoid the direct consequences of his evil actions. The observations of the physiologist bear out the sternest dictates of the ethical philosopher, the denunciations of the prophet, and the teachings of the theologian. There is nothing in the revelations wrought by the knowledge of the natural man which is demoralising in its tendencies. The creed of the physiologist is, that there is no escape from the consequences of evil done, except by calling new forces into action?or perishing utterly before the consequences have had time to come home. There is nothing whatever in the lessons of physiology which tends in the slightest to diminish the sense of what is due from the created to the Creator ; there is nothing which in the slightest degree diminishes the physiologist’s entire agreement with the lines?
Though tho mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though He stands and waits with patience, with exactness grinds He all.
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