_HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION. EDUCATION_
I
The most difficult thing in the study of man is to surprise him on the
threshold of life, to meet him as he detaches himself from the tissues
of the mother, in the guise of a cell seeking the mysterious contact
of the fertilising element; to seize the moment in which that wondrous
force containing potentially the whole story of an existence penetrates
the chemical elements of the germ; to learn how, in the protoplasm of
the first imperceptible nucleus, that marvellous activity awakes which
only death will end.
There is a comparatively long period at the very beginning of
our existence in which the nature and differential properties of
the tissues lie, so to speak, dormant in a crumb of protoplasm.
Microscopists discover no difference between the cells of that primary
tissue. The turbidness appearing on the whitish leaflet of the germ
seems regulated from the beginning of the division of labour; at
a few points the materials accumulate which are requisite for the
transformation of the cells, as though these last, too much occupied
in their prodigious activity of separating and multiplying, must find
close at hand the materials which they need to make a man, without the
delay of elaborating and preparing them before they introduce them into
their body. Thus it has been found, that from the beginning sugar or
glycogen, one of the most important substances in the composition of
the muscles, is present in abundance.
But up to this point, and even for many days afterwards, there is no
indication, no possible recognition, even of a rough outline of a human
form. And yet in this confusion of atoms we exist. Here our passions
lie sleeping; on this whitish leaflet are written in undecipherable
characters those links of heredity which connect us with our family and
with past generations. As from the scarcely visible germ in the heart
of the acorn the majestic oak will spring to reign over the forest, so
from this indistinct cellular mass a being will be formed to represent
in his microcosm the whole history of the human race, with its fears,
diseases, instincts, passions, its hate, vileness, and grandeur.
The terrible legend of curses blasting the innocence of unborn
babes, the blessings cast forth into the future for the enjoyment of
generations yet to come, are not wholly a foolish fable. Destiny loads
each one of us with a fatal inheritance. Though we were abandoned in
the forest, imprisoned in the dungeon of a tower, without a guide,
without example, without light, there yet would awake in us, like
a mysterious dream, the experience of our parents and our earliest
ancestors.
What we call instinct is the voice of past generations reverberating
like a distant echo in the cells of the nervous system. We feel the
breath, the advice, the experience of all men, from those who lived on
acorns and struggled with the wild beasts, dying naked in the forests,
down to the virtue and toil of our father, to the fear and love of our
mother.
II
Methods of education are essentially two in number, severity and
indulgence. Which is better? It is impossible to give a categorical
answer, for we are not concerned with the education of a brain or a man
in general, but of the brain and man of a special case.
Some say that until the child has become a rational being it must be
considered and treated as a little animal, because it has no sense of
shame, nor of the rights of property, nor of social duty; that the
didactic methods which it most fears must be adopted, that is to say,
those only which serve to tame and domesticate animals--punishments,
the whip, blows.
Happily, in the midst of the animal instincts a light is soon diffused
in the child’s brain which will place him above all the animals of the
earth, and none can say with certainty when these first flashes of
reason appear.
The pain of a blow must always appear to him so out of proportion to
all his instinctive, involuntary movements, that instead of softening
him it will rouse profound resentment in him, and impress him with
the distressing idea of permanently threatening dangers and of the
strangeness of his surroundings, in which, without any plausible
reason, caresses alternate with blows.
The same methods should be followed in education as in the teaching of
science, which are those giving to man the firmest and most lasting
convictions. Whatever may be the force of authority, it can never be
compared in efficacy to that of conviction; we should never issue any
command without showing the reasons why it should be done in this way
rather than in another.
Children should be brought up as though they were rational, because
the animal in them disappears, the man remains. Recourse should be had
to the most intelligible and convincing means; if it is seen that they
have acquired bad habits, the opportunities for ill-doing should be
removed and the effort made, by offering them other attractions, to
preserve them from the temptation of those acts or those things which
they are to avoid.
One may be more indulgent with good, docile children. Those who cry
easily, who blush and scream, give less trouble than those who grow
pale and tremble, who do not manifest their resentment by an immediate
outburst, as though they were brooding hatred in a corner of their
hearts.
A peasant-woman, in speaking of someone, once said to me: 'I have seen
him gnash his teeth when a boy for a mere nothing, and so I would not
marry him, and I was quite right.’ In mental sufferings, when the
tension of the nervous system cannot find a vent in immediate emotion,
it accumulates and becomes more incontrollable in long-suppressed
outbursts; the rage which we thought subdued continues to torture us
and gnaw our vitals.
Indulgence should be shown to nervous children who suffer from
convulsions, or are predisposed to such. One must be kind to them and
not oppose their caprices with too much severity, unless they are
actually insensate. Even loving punishment provokes an explosion of
grief and nervous agitation in these unhappy children; every violent
emotion leaves an imperceptible, morbid, accumulative tendency behind.
In opposing them one falls 'out of the frying-pan into the fire.’
It is better to preserve their lives and postpone stricter education
till they become less sensitive; in the meantime they must not be
fatigued with study, but strengthened like a plant which one places in
the sun and open air, and from which one prunes the injurious shoots at
a later time. This is often successful, and then they may be ranked
again with healthy children. Even for the latter, premature education
is a very grievous error. Parents who make their children learn too
many things, sacrifice their future to gratify their own ambition.
Nature must not be forced, nor the activity of the nervous system
exhausted before the body has grown strong.
Parents who have already some weak spot--a little fault in the
character, a slight blemish in the organism--should redouble their
care in order to cure their children from their own defects. Just
as a scirrhus, cancer, consumption, neurosis, are transmitted from
one generation to another, just as the large mouth, the long nose,
the eyes and hair of this or that colour, are inherited, so vices,
virtues, and moral dispositions are handed down from family to family.
In little villages especially, in which one may best trace the customs
of an ancestor in the whole of his descendants, one often hears such
sayings as 'His father was just the same; his grandfather was a great
good-for-nothing, too.’ 'Generosity is hereditary in that house.’ Thus
were cynicism and cruelty transmitted from one to another in the family
of the Claudii.
The root of a family tree may be compared to one of those Chinese
boxes full of other boxes gradually decreasing in size, the unending
succession of which strikes us with wonder. Marriage and intermarriage
with other families mix and mingle these boxes in such a way that an
inextricable confusion arises; but if from some height we could watch
the long line of generations, we should see that they continue slowly
to disclose themselves. Some children resemble the grandfather, the
great-grandfather, or the great-great-grandfather, as though a seed
had passed through several generations without unclosing, and then had
suddenly sprung into life with such resemblance in features, manners,
voice, eyes, character, that the old people recognise it and say, 'He
is the very image of his grandfather.’ Thus the forefathers are born
and live again in future generations.
III
What a wonderful phenomenon is this power in man to reappear in future
generations by means of heredity, to transmit his own nature to his
descendants by transfusing it--working it into their organism! And no
less wonderful is it to see how not only instincts but organs gradually
disappear in the course of generations when they are not put into
action. In insects, crustaceans, fish, amphibians which have migrated
to caverns and have lived for many generations in the dark, the eyes
are almost imperceptible, and this is certainly not the result of
natural selection, for eyes are not injurious even to beings living in
the dark, but solely because, with the cessation of the activity of an
organ, it must of necessity retrograde.
Three or four generations are necessary before horses completely lose
their wild instincts, so that some horse-breeders only choose those
that have been already trained in the circus.
If one takes two hounds exactly alike (of the same mother and the same
litter) and accustoms the one to the chase, the other to watch the
house; if one then allows them to breed separately, so as to form two
distinct families, one to start the game for man when hunting, the
other to guard his house against strangers, we may be certain that
after four or five generations their instincts will be profoundly
modified. If after ten years one takes a litter from each of these
families descended from a common ancestor, and rears them in the same
room under the same conditions, far from every noise, and brings
them when they are grown into a meadow, it will be seen that, at the
report of a gun, the offspring of the dogs trained for the chase will
look around as though trying to espy a bird, while the others run off
terrified.
On the shores of certain almost desert islands birds are found
which, like the _Phalaropus_ of Iceland,[38] are very much afraid
of man, while those living in the interior of the island are not at
all timorous. If one reads Brehm’s 'Animal Life,’ one finds similar
instances of fear transmitted from generation to generation, with
marked differences in the same species according to the relations which
the animals have with man. Although monkeys in general are very timid,
and always flee at the sight of man, the _Semnopithecus_ _entellus_,
which the Indians worship and honour as a divinity, has become so bold
that it enters the gardens, steals everything, plunders the houses,
rummages in the trunks and cupboards of the Europeans, and snatches
food from off the table or out of their hands. A missionary relates
that he was once in a disagreeable predicament, because he had nothing
to offer to these impudent monkeys, and that, if he had not defended
himself in time with a stick, the animals would have whipped him.[39]
[38] Preyer: _Kataplexie_, p. 107. 1878.
[39] Brehm: _Säugethiere_. 1883. Vol. i. p. 105.
The mechanism by which these far-reaching changes in the instincts
of animals are accomplished and transmitted by means of heredity to
successive generations is one of the most obscure facts in medicine.
The drunkard begets children predisposed to madness, just as the
syphilitic transmit their curse to the innocent victims to whom they
give life, but we know nothing of the manner of transmission; heredity
of instinct remains inscrutable; the physiologist cannot yet confront
such problems, so that he becomes a simple chronicler of the facts of
which he does not know the laws, nor the intricate connecting threads.
Brown-Séquard tried to subject this problem to experimental study,
and obtained results which surprised all physiologists. He observed
that guinea-pigs in which he had severed the sciatic nerve produced
epileptic offspring, and that the destruction in male or female of
certain parts of the nerve-centres caused marked malformation in the
ears and eyes of the progeny.
Pasteur found that the lambs of ewes that had been protected from a
contagious malady called anthrax by inoculation with a diluted virus,
were not attacked by this disease, and that even when inoculated with
the active virus which would cause the death of other animals, they
resisted it and did not succumb. This fact was confirmed by Toussaint
and others.
There were, indeed, many indications in science which led to the idea
of protecting from diseases by means of heredity. If small-pox does not
rage as formerly, if the victims are no longer so numerous, and if even
the unvaccinated recover more easily, it is because a modification of
our organism has been brought about through heredity and inoculation.
Whenever this disease appears in a district which was never before
infected, it rages as violently as formerly. The same thing takes
place when the inhabitants of a country where this disease is unknown
come to a town in the air of which the germs are present in abundance.
The eight Eskimos who were brought a short time ago to the Jardin
d’Acclimatation in Paris all died of the small-pox.
It is a well-known fact that children of the same stock do not all
resemble each other like stereotyped editions. Very often brothers and
sisters, although they may have a striking physical resemblance to
each other, show great difference of character; and what is of more
importance to our study, these variations occur even though all the
members of a family have been brought up in the same way.
It is with heredity as with certain chemical combinations arranged in
kindred categories because of similarity of structure and composition,
although one is noxious, the other beneficial, one poisonous, the other
neutral. Even in twins joined together--there are several cases in
the annals of medicine--in those also which I studied together with
Professor Fubini, who are connected at the lower part of the trunk
and have only two legs together, and who must certainly have always
lived under the same conditions, there are yet profound differences of
character.
We must therefore distinguish between the hereditary and the personal
character, the characteristics of the family and those of the
individual.
IV
The greater the advance of science, the greater should be the authority
of the physician in education. All pedagogic systems deviating from
natural means lead us into error and into morbid conditions of mind and
body. Education should be conducted according to the laws of life, the
needs of the organism, and the material interests of society.
The study of all that relates to the development of the intellectual
faculties, the cure of aberrations of instinct and moral defects caused
by the turbulence of the passions are problems so closely connected
with phenomena of the physical order, that the physiologist and the
physician should devote their attention to them as to a biological
fact, as to the cure of a disease.
Unhappily, even considered from this point, the problem of education
presents most serious difficulties. Some passions are incurable; others
the body cannot resist, but wastes rapidly away under them, as under
the fatal sway of a galloping consumption. The will does not suffice,
for itself is only the result of the vitality of the organism, and of
the greater or lesser resistance of which the nervous system feels
itself capable.
The succession of causes and effects often forms an indissoluble circle
which man cannot break with the simple force of his will. _Weakness
produces fear, and fear produces weakness._ Here is a fatal revolution
in the functions of the organism. Of what use are the arbitrary and
imaginary distinctions philosophers have made in the functions of the
mind, when they cannot be separated from those of the body? There are
in life fatal cliffs, currents which we cannot stem, and which carry us
to inevitable destruction.
_Weakness increases excitability, excitability foments lasciviousness,
and lasciviousness in its turn begets weakness._ Here the functions
of the organism are like a gaping whirlpool, like an avalanche moving
onwards and dragging us to the fatal precipice, does a foot but slip on
the path of life.
We now see that in our body some mechanism is lacking which would
act as a curb to save us when we fall. It is one of the greatest
imperfections of our nature that at every false step we may be thrown
down and crushed, as though in the wheels of a machine. We may compare
ourselves to those poor wretches who intoxicate themselves with opium
or alcohol, and who, at last, cannot stop themselves on their downward
path of intemperance, because if they cease drinking, opium-smoking, or
opium-eating, there is an immediate aggravation of the morbid phenomena
and tremor with which they are afflicted.
The primary cause of their disease now assuages the disease itself; it
is a remedy which soothes them and slowly kills them.
Physiology is still too imperfect to make intelligible to us the
intricate network of causes which impel man to act in one way rather
than in another. Our eye cannot discern many important factors in human
actions which, perhaps, will become evident to future generations.
Chronicles, annals, biographies offer insufficient data and details too
imperfectly known. I do not know when it will be possible to others to
penetrate, as Taine did, far into the history of nations, to discover
the biological laws governing the rise and fall of the greatness of a
people. I only know that I am saddened and perplexed at the unhappy
thought that, as the brain of the human race grows more perfect, the
more sensitive and excitable will it become, the more will emotional
desires wax within it.
V
Courage springs from three sources: nature, education, and conviction.
Each of these may so preponderate as to compensate for the deficiency
of the others. It is useless to say to a man, 'You must be courageous,’
in order to make him so. Every day we see that the example of parents,
education, admonitions, do not suffice to implant virtue in the
children. There is a vital element in education which must be prepared
long before, like the soil and the seed before the harvest; parents
must bequeath to their children the inheritance of a constitution,
robust and full of courage.
Fear attacks and nullifies every effort of the will in such a manner
that it has always been esteemed a deed of heroism to combat and subdue
it utterly. Alexander of Macedonia offered up sacrifices to Fear before
he went to battle, and Tullus Hostilius erected temples and consecrated
priests to it. In the museum of Turin there are two Roman medals, one
of which bears the impression of a terrified woman, the other the head
of a man with hair on end and frightened, staring eyes. They were
struck by the consuls of the family of the Hostilii in remembrance of
the vows made to propitiate Fear, which threatened to invade the ranks
of the soldiers, who thereupon were led to victory.
The consciousness of strength makes us stronger. The history of
medicine is full of the marvellous effects of confidence. If we were
to cite all the examples of hysterical women, nervous, melancholy,
paralytic men who, on the simple word of a physician, through faith
in the efficacy of some remedy, have taken courage and recovered, we
should see that every day wonders and miracles worthy of the saints are
performed.
Neither may we say that it is all the effect of imagination, of
fancy, because the modification of the circulation in the brain of
one who resolutely determines to overcome a difficulty produces such
an increase of energy in the nerve-centres and in the tension of the
muscles that we sometimes see deeds performed by the pusillanimous such
as were never expected of them, however strong and robust they may be
physically.
* * * * *
We have seen that of itself the brain can originate nothing; at the
most it seems to us free to choose amongst the various things presented
to it. But, however heavily liberty may be fettered, it is yet beyond
doubt that we may give a certain direction to our mind, and the aim
of education must be to keep the attention continually fixed on those
things which can strengthen the character.
In his celebrated book on the 'Passions of the Soul,’ Descartes
says,[40] '_Pour exerciter en soi la hardiesse, et ôter la peur, il
ne suffit pas d’en avoir la volonté, mais il faut s’appliquer à
considérer les raisons, les objets ou les exemples qui persuadent que
le péril n’est pas grand; qu’il y a toujours plus de sûreté en la
défense qu’en la fuite; qu’on aura de la gloire et de la joie d’avoir
vaincu, au lieu qu’on ne peut attendre que du regret et de la honte
d’avoir fui, et choses semblables._’
[40] Descartes: _Les passions de l’âme_. Article xlv, Première partie.
VI.
What is most difficult in education is persistence; what is most
efficacious is example. Severity is useless, perseverance it is which
wins the day; there is nothing more harmful and fatal than inconstancy
of purpose.
The paramount object of education should be to increase the strength of
man, and to foster in him everything which conduces to life. Children
whom parents teach to attribute too much importance to every little
pain are thus predisposed to hypochondria. Sadness is a languor of the
body, and we know by long experience that the melancholy and the timid
oppose less resistance to diseases than others.[41]
[41] _Melancholici, qui natura sunt timidi et inconstantes, frequentius
reliquos in morbos incidunt._ An old adage found in the most ancient
books of medicine.
In women one minute of intense fear produces far more frightful
effects, and inflicts far more serious injuries, than in men, but the
fault is ours, who have always considered the weakness of women a
charm and an attraction; it is the fault of our erroneous system of
education, which only seeks to develop the affections of the woman,
neglecting what would be more efficacious--the creation of a strong
character. We sometimes imagine that the most important branch of
culture is that which we attain through education and study, that the
progress of humanity is wholly represented by science, literature,
works of art which are handed down from one generation to another;
but in ourselves, our blood, there is a no less important factor.
Civilisation has remoulded our nerve-centres; there is a culture which
heredity transmits to the brain of our children; the supremacy of
present generations depends upon the greater power in thinking, the
greater skill in acting. The future and the power of a nation do not
lie solely in its commerce, its science, or its army, but in the hearts
of its citizens, the wombs of its mothers, the courage or cowardice of
its sons.
Let us remember that fear is a disease to be cured; the brave man may
fail sometimes, but the coward fails always.
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Transcriber’s Notes:
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