Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/74

64 by antagonistic or disturbing causes, the fact remains that heredity has not the upper hand. With what ingenious reasons soever you console yourself on seeing the ideal sovereignty of heredity brought down, in matter of fact, to a very low grade of authority, still heredity is not helped. In a word, if non-heredity has in fact a far wider empire than heredity, the question arises, Why does M. Ribot adopt a formula which implies the contrary?

Besides, does not the history of the development of civilization itself show existing in man the preponderant force of an eternal tendency to metamorphosis, to innovation, and to change? Fixedness of thoughts and immobility of habits were, it is true, the law of primitive peoples, as they still are of savage tribes; but then there is nothing to show that this is owing to heredity. This more or less protracted repetition of identical societies should rather, we think, be attributed to the strong and irresistible instinct of imitation and to the profound respect entertained for rites and customs established by religion. Among such peoples the future is like the present, and the present like the past, because the same inflexible rule, the same authority, and the same tyrannical superstition are imposed on them all. Nothing possesses strength or obtains respect except through tradition, and tradition among such people is only the revered memory of the will of the mysterious powers, manifested in days of yore. When the English would have the Hindoos take a part in road-building and the hygienic improvement of their country, they have still to show that the usefulness of such enterprises was understood by the most ancient Brahmans—so hard is it for this old race to conceive of a law which should be obligatory without being traditional.

However that may be, and whatever part heredity may act here, certain it is that this part is not important, since this singular homogeneity of primitive races, instead of being maintained and growing stronger, does, sooner or later, give place to diversity. Every people is in turn invaded by a force at once capable of acting counter to its hereditary influences, and of releasing it from the iron yoke of antique customs. It was in Greece that about 3,000 years ago the first movement of this force brought about what Goethe calls "the liberation of humanity." Since that day the crossings of distinct races, the many new wants, and the various inventions to which they have given rise, and the ideas which men, owing to their more and more intimate contact with Nature, have conceived, have set in the place of primitive simplicity a multiple and irresistible variability, as the present state of the world clearly shows.