Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1886 — Huxley on the Origin of Character. [ARTICLE]

Huxley on the Origin of Character.

“Nothing in this life, to me,” said Professor Huxley, “is sadder than the fact that a man, watching the development of his children, is doomed to see his own peculiarities, his own faults—the things which lie condemns in liiiAself—cropping out in them. They may have his good traits, too. But nothing that he can do will prevent those old faults coming out in them. That illustrates the immutability of law. Children inherit certain traits and capabilities. They must go on and develop them. There is nothing more. They are bounded by the elements which are born in them. A particular man receives a blow on the head, you see. Now, perhaps he recovers from that blow; he is apparently perfectly well; but the effect of the blow continues. A son is born to the man. What has become of the energy expended in that blow upon the man's head? It ds bound to continue. You cannot get rid of that. The persistence of force makes it inevitable. Pprhaps the man’s son gets along all right*, and perhaps he doesn’t. But suppose that the son, or the son’s son, turns out to be a forger, or a criminal of some sort—possibly a murderer. How do we know that this is not the result of the oiiginal blow on the head, producing a Slight accidental impression on the brain, the force of which takes the form of moral perversion in the offspring.—George Parsons Lathrop.