ardent ignorance; and nobody has ever been able to offer any theories
of moral heredity which justified themselves in the only scientific sense;
that is that one could calculate on them beforehand
On all such subjects there is no science, but only a sort of
ardent ignorance; and nobody has ever been able to offer any theories
of moral heredity which justified themselves in the only scientific sense;
that is that one could calculate on them beforehand. There are
six cases, say, of a grandson having the same twitch of mouth or vice
of character as his grandfather; or perhaps there are sixteen cases,
or perhaps sixty. But there are not two cases, there is not one case,
there are no cases at all, of anybody betting half a crown that
the grandfather will have a grandson with the twitch or the vice.
In short, we deal with heredity as we deal with omens, affinities and
the fulfillment of dreams. The things do happen, and when they
happen we record them; but not even a lunatic ever reckons on them.
Indeed, heredity, like dreams and omens, is a barbaric notion; that is,
not necessarily an untrue, but a dim, groping and unsystematized notion.
A civilized man feels himself a little more free from his family.
Before Christianity these tales of tribal doom occupied the savage north;
and since the Reformation and the revolt against Christianity
(which is the religion of a civilized freedom) savagery is slowly
creeping back in the form of realistic novels and problem plays.
The curse of Rougon-Macquart is as heathen and superstitious as the curse
of Ravenswood; only not so well written. But in this twilight barbaric
sense the feeling of a racial fate is not irrational, and may be
allowed like a hundred other half emotions that make life whole.
The only essential of tragedy is that one should take it lightly.
But even when the barbarian deluge rose to its highest in the madder
novels of Zola (such as that called 'The Human Beast', a gross
libel on beasts as well as humanity), even then the application
of the hereditary idea to practice is avowedly timid and fumbling.
The students of heredity are savages in this vital sense; that they
stare back at marvels, but they dare not stare forward to schemes.
In practice no one is mad enough to legislate or educate upon dogmas
of physical inheritance; and even the language of the thing is rarely
used except for special modern purposes, such as the endowment
of research or the oppression of the poor.
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