CHAPTER VII.

_HEREDITY._

All those to whose lot it has fallen to minister to the wants of sufferers from nervous disease must have come across cases which they were expected to benefit, but for whom, manifestly, very little could be done. So great is human perversity, that though cases of epilepsy and nervous exhaustion are every day regarded as incurable merely because the most efficacious modes of treatment remain untried, these persons of defective nervous system and perverted growth are often supposed capable of development into ordinary people after a few weeks or months of special attention on the part of those to whose care they are confided.

It seems useless to point out the wide difference between the two classes. The non-medical mind cannot or will not understand it. Our ignorance on such matters is boundless.

It has always appeared to me that these unfortunate defective people are truly our sin-bearers, for they reap to the full the consequences of our mistakes; they inherit the results of a pernicious order of affairs. The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. Cursed from their infancy with a fatal blight; expected to arrive at a moral standard which is wholly beyond them; tormented in childhood by vain attempts to force them to the level of other children; the small stock of intelligence--which love, the great educator, might in some instances have developed to a limited extent--dwarfed and dissipated by impatient ignorance; objects too often of the heteropathy of which Miss Cobbe speaks so feelingly in her exquisite work entitled “Duties of Women;” these unhappy sufferers are surely spectacles fit to move the pity of gods and men.

Yet, in cases where the nerves, by means of which alone the moral sense can manifest itself, are altogether wanting, these are the very persons who are glibly declared to be utterly bad. Just because they are deficient, just because reformatory efforts can have no effect upon them, it is thought excusable, and even laudable, to bestow upon them hatred and scorn. And it frequently happens that those who so readily mete out their hatred and scorn, believe that the Carpenter of Nazareth ate with publicans and sinners, and consorted with those who were possessed of devils; that the woman taken in adultery was not condemned; that the dying thief on the cross was admitted to Paradise.

To care for the defective; to bestow on them the love that has been withheld; to reverence them as the bearers of our common sins; to mitigate their sufferings and shield them from injustice; this seems to me the most Christlike work that can be undertaken by any philanthropist in any age.

But some of these cases are not hopeless. If we have but knowledge and patience enough to place them in the best conditions, much may be done for the greater number of distorted beings. The longer we withhold our aid, the less are our chances of success. Their original surroundings are generally bad, owing to the same tendencies being inherited more or less by other members of their families. And we must remember that, in the treatment of nervous disease, we may show our wisdom quite as much by what we refrain from doing as by what we do. We must not start with the idea that we have to work a sudden reformation, but that we have to allow the organism room to grow naturally and in the right direction. We cannot create moral growth, or growth of any kind, but we can minister to it and promote it by placing the organism in the conditions where it shall absorb the largest amount of nutriment--of vitality,--and we can then direct the pressure which determines its form.

We constantly see around us instances of persons, not naturally defective, who have been subjected to lifelong distortion. In an enlightened community this should be impossible. Place in a low conservatory a plant that has a capacity for growing into a forest tree; withhold from it the needed nutriment, and it will remain dwarfed; deprive it altogether either of the food which it must assimilate in order to maintain vitality, or of the light and air without which waste cannot be promoted and function performed, and our plant must die. Give it all these necessaries, but keep it in the low conservatory, and when it reaches the roof of the building it will remain stunted or grow awry. Perhaps the nutriment that ought to have enabled it to shoot upwards will go into the lower branches, and the tree will become misshapen.

Does not this often happen to the human plant? Is not its lower nature developed at the expense of the higher, because bounds are set to its upward development?

The highest type of human being, then, is not merely that which has the most vitality, but also that which can distribute it in due proportion to its various parts, and that which has been permitted to expand naturally in right directions. The extent to which we possess this vitality,--the power we have of assimilating the force stored up in our food, to repair waste and ensure growth,--is largely determined by heredity.

True, this fact is in some quarters violently disputed; but not, I think, in quarters deserving of much attention. Distorted people are generally vehement, and resort to bare assertion and flat contradiction when observation, analogy, and rational argument are all with their opponent. It is well, perhaps, when the perverted force-current can steam off so harmlessly instead of working mischief in other channels; just as it is well when excitable political speeches and articles save us from dangerous secret organisations.

A young lady once declined to entertain the idea of heredity for a moment, on the ground that, supposing her to be the unfortunate possessor of a grandmother who was a monster of wickedness, she would be expected to prove herself a monster of wickedness likewise. It was in vain for a gentleman present to point out that we usually have more than one grandmother, and that if her other grandmother happened to be an angel of light, she might with equal justice be expected to develop angelic characteristics. She saw her side of the argument, but not his. As a matter of fact, we know so little of the numbers of ancestors from all of whom we may inherit, and we understand so little of the conditions determining the inheritance of given characteristics, that we are not yet in a position to entertain expectations at all. All we know is, that we do not generally get so far as finding grapes on thorns and figs on thistles. The interesting subject of heredity still offers a wide field to the observer. So far, physiological revelation does but prove the truth of the Biblical revelation--that nothing is of ourselves, but that all is of God.

On the one hand too much has been made of heredity, and on the other hand too little. Sometimes its warnings are wholly disregarded; sometimes disease is regarded as inevitable if it has already existed in a family, and if there are any symptoms of its recurrence, wise precautions being consequently neglected. Good education would often avert the evil. Unfortunately, it is in families displaying neurotic tendencies that education is usually most hopelessly bad. It would be easy to give numbers of instances in the upper classes where nervous disease is, with the best intentions, literally being coined. Heredity does not mean that certain hard and fast qualities are displayed by the parents and inherited by the children, but that certain tendencies may develop--pathologically or otherwise--in suitable surroundings. Insane persons may have no insanity in their families, but may yet have resulted from a combination of neurotic stocks, the conditions in which the utmost might have been made of their defective structure having been denied them. Indeed, the means resorted to in order to reform such people would be ridiculous were not the whole affair so infinitely pathetic. The smile of derision would be oftener on our lips but for the tear of pity which follows close behind it.

Many persons rebel against the doctrine of heredity because they consider it destructive of faith in God. Surely their own faith must rest on very insecure foundations. Belief in an all-loving God can but be strengthened by a knowledge of the means by which He develops and guides His creations. Kinematics, mathematics, biology, all natural and physical science--the means by which we study His great and continuous “Act,” the universe--should serve to increase our faith, since in Him we live and move and have our being. Even denying scientists do but reveal Him. If it be true that when we would do good evil is present with us, it is also true that when we do what seems evil we often bring about good results. How can there be conflict between the laws of Nature and the laws of Nature’s God?

Again, it is contended that it is possible for us to live an evil life, and, by means of scientific knowledge, avert the suffering which, in a God-fearing community is the reward of evil, the race being thereby saved from destruction. A very little consideration will suffice to show us that such contentions are without justification. The laws of God are not to be evaded. We bring ourselves to nothing when we “kick against the pricks.” We have seen that if any part be disused, nutriment can no longer be attracted to it. Let that part of the organism by which the moral sense manifests itself fall into disuse, and disintegration has begun in that part--that is to say, a larger amount of waste than can be repaired by nutrition. Supposing the defect to be counterbalanced by excessive activity of another part of the organism, this is no true compensation. No development of the lower part can atone for the loss of the higher. We should, at best, have one-sided beings, who lack the social instinct and must run counter to one another’s aims. Mutual destruction would result from their downward progress, and regulations previously agreed upon would be disregarded as the higher nature deteriorated. Moreover, no excessively one-sided organism can remain healthy. In such cases we commonly see the development of suicidal tendencies.[8] Our degenerate tribe would thus be suicidal both collectively and individually. In the most favourable circumstances imaginable, their career would resemble that of “The-do-as-you-likes” in Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies;” but, as a matter of fact, no selfish tribe could have such a good time of it as even these unfortunates had, since roast pigs are not usually found running about in convenient proximity to the lazy.

It cannot be too widely taught, then, that the moment we withdraw ourselves from the paring and shaping action of life’s sieves, and choose only what is pleasant, our deterioration begins. Physical disease follows close at the heels of moral lethargy, just as physical disease may impair the moral sense. And the degenerative process being begun, our children and our children’s children, even unto the fourth generation, may bear the burden of our shortcomings.

In our efforts to raise a healthy race, we are apt to make one very serious blunder. We forget that the word _nervous_ has two meanings. In its truer sense it implies strength, not weakness. Persons suffering from nerve-trouble have come to be called nervous, and so the sensitive organisation,--the finest, most highly developed organisation,--is quite unjustly depreciated. The healthy sea-anemone is less sensitive than the healthy human being. Would it therefore be preferable to be a sea-anemone?

The confusion between the large and complex nervous organisation and a diseased or defective condition has been aided by the fact that the genius--the truly nervous man in the higher sense, the largest offshoot from the great force-current--is invariably placed in hard conditions in youth. He pays the penalty for being before his time. He belongs to a higher standard than that into which he is forced. In the family nest he is the ugly duckling; in the world he is persecuted. When his marvellous insight and keen intelligence enable him to foresee the remote but lasting pernicious effects of practices that are clung to by his fellows for the sake of their immediate advantage, he falls by the hand of the assassin or is universally credited with madness. Centuries after his death, when his community has painfully toiled to his level, his greatness is recognised, and he is deified or canonised.

It is perhaps well that the growth of such offshoots is limited in every age by a mental atmosphere as real as the atmosphere surrounding our globe and limiting our aerial flights. Apparently it is not decreed that human progress shall be rapid. Nevertheless, a too wholesale destruction of our most highly organised members must certainly ensure that evolution backwards of which I spoke in another chapter.

The fact is, we find it hard to distinguish between genius and eccentricity. The uncontrolled eccentricities of the matured do so much harm, that it is found necessary to suppress them. But we should remember that the genius is always eccentric in youth unless he is allowed a very wide area for development--and this is the last service his friends are willing to do him. He has, as it were, to develop into a large circle. His great vitality and many-sidedness enable him to take advantage of any chance diminution of pressure, and in each direction where resistance is least he shoots out long points and angles. If any of these angles be lopped or violently discouraged, he may be a one-sided or distorted being. Let him alone, however, and in due course he will fill in the spaces between his angles and grow into a finely rounded being. But the magnificent virtue of letting one another alone is still little cultivated by our community.

Now, persons who are merely eccentric do not shoot out their angles in a variety of directions and fill in the spaces as soon as opportunity is granted them. They have only one or two long angles, to which they continue to add till they become such a nuisance that the peace and safety of the community demand their control. Both genius and eccentricity being hereditary, and the logical outcome of extreme eccentricity in one generation being insanity in the next, we need to exercise care in our dealings with these abnormal developments. To drive men of genius into the ranks of the eccentrics is a very dangerous policy. Let us honestly recognise the fact that we are all of us potential madmen.

Curiously enough, those who have the least pretension to sound organisation and rounded development are most often lauded as men of genius. Talent in one special direction developed at the expense of more essential parts of the organism, not an exceptional vitality, secures them this distinction. We should be cautious as to the objects we choose for admiration, since, by a natural law, that which we admire becomes prevalent.

Some persons propose to reform the world by means of checking reproduction from unfit types. But this measure would be useless so long as our conditions continue to coin the thing we would destroy. And if we could alter our conditions, the measure would be unnecessary, as the unfit already existing would soon die a natural death or be suitably modified. In some cases the wholesale change suggested would have very bad results, for the children of misdirected geniuses may possibly revert to the former standard and inherit the original genius of the parent without his recent aberrations. Our measures would but serve therefore to check the reproduction of these highly desirable types. In the midst of our black ignorance on such matters, our wisest course is to refrain from violent and irrevocable action. Instead of hurrying to lop people’s angles, it would be well if we were first to try the effect of removing pressure from the spaces between them.

The genius is proverbially known by his quick pulse, though the same symptom may be observed in many defective people. Waste and repair alike go on quickly. He is eminently adaptable; he takes any shape. But the great test of the genuineness of the article is his sincerity. Above all things must his higher moral sense remain intact.

History has given us one splendid example of the highest type of genius in the great Dutch hero, William the Silent; the man who, to use the words of his biographer, bore the burden of a nation’s sorrows on his shoulders _with a smiling face_. A homeless wanderer with a price set upon his head, poor, friendless and unsupported, this man opposed himself to the trained legions of Spain, the wealth of Brazil, and the tremendous machinery of the Inquisition.

The result was the independence of the United Provinces!

And the cause of it?

Here let us quote Father William’s own words.

“Before seeking to conclude a treaty with any earthly potentate,” he writes to his brother Louis, “_I had entered into an alliance with the King of Kings_.”

We are not surprised to learn that this man fell by the hand of an assassin, with a prayer for others on his lips.