intellectual limits which the absence of theology always
imposes. Leaving the soul on one side, let us suppose for the sake of
argument that the human character in the first case comes wholly from
parents; and then let us curtly state our knowledge rather than our
ignorance.

*****

II. THE TRIBAL TERROR

Popular science, like that of Mr. Blatchford, is in this matter as mild
as old wives' tales. Mr. Blatchford, with colossal simplicity, explained
to millions of clerks and workingmen that the mother is like a bottle of
blue beads and the father is like a bottle of yellow beads; and so the
child is like a bottle of mixed blue beads and yellow. He might just as
well have said that if the father has two legs and the mother has two
legs, the child will have four legs. Obviously it is not a question
of simple addition or simple division of a number of hard detached
"qualities," like beads. It is an organic crisis and transformation of
the most mysterious sort; so that even if the result is unavoidable, it
will still be unexpected. It is not like blue beads mixed with yellow
beads; it is like blue mixed with yellow; the result of which is green,
a totally novel and unique experience, a new emotion. A man might live
in a complete cosmos of blue and yellow, like the "Edinburgh Review"; a
man might never have seen anything but a golden cornfield and a sapphire
sky; and still he might never have had so wild a fancy as green. If
you paid a sovereign for a bluebell; if you spilled the mustard on the
blue-books; if you married a canary to a blue baboon; there is nothing
in any of these wild weddings that contains even a hint of green. Green
is not a mental combination, like addition; it is a physical result
like birth. So, apart from the fact that nobody ever really understands
parents or children either, yet even if we could understand the parents,
we could not make any conjecture about the children. Each time the force
works in a different way; each time the constituent colors combine into
a different spectacle. A girl may actually inherit her ugliness from
her mother's good looks. A boy may actually get his weakness from his
father's strength. Even if we admit it is really a fate, for us it must
remain a fairy tale. Considered in regard to its causes, the Calvinists
and materialists may be right or wrong; we leave them their dreary
debate. But considered in regard to its results there is no doubt about
it. The thing is