, the consequences of the
chill will be absolutely the same; and nothing on this earth or beneath
the sky--save only myself, or man if he be able--will enhance my
suffering because I have committed a crime, or relieve my pain because
my action was virtuous.

4

Let us consider another form of physical justice: heredity. There
again we find the same indifference to moral causes. And truly it were
a strange justice indeed that would throw upon the son, and even the
remote descendant, the burden of a fault committed by his father or his
ancestor. But human morality would raise no objection: man would not
protest. To him it would seem natural, magnificent, even fascinating.
It would indefinitely prolong his individuality, his consciousness and
existence; and from this point of view would accord with a number of
indisputable facts which prove that we are not wholly self-contained,
but connect, in more than one subtle, mysterious fashion, with all that
surrounds us in life, with all that precedes us, or follows.

And yet, true as this may be in certain cases, it is not true as
regards the justice of physical heredity, which is absolutely
indifferent to the moral causes of the deed whose consequences the
descendants have to bear. There is physical relation between the act
of the father, whereby he has undermined his health, and the consequent
suffering of the son; but the son's suffering will be the same whatever
the intentions or motives of the father, be these heroic or shameful.
And, further, the area of what we call the justice of physical heredity
would appear to be very restricted. A father may have been guilty of a
hundred abominable crimes, he may have been a murderer, a traitor, a
persecutor of the innocent or despoiler of the wretched, without these
crimes leaving the slightest trace upon the organism of his children.
It is enough that he should have been careful to do nothing that might
injure his health.

5

So much for the justice of Nature as shown in physical heredity. Moral
heredity would appear to be governed by similar principles; but as it
deals with modifications of the mind and character infinitely more
complex and more elusive, its manifestations are less striking, and its
results less certain. Pathology is the only region which admits of its
definite observation and study; and there we observe it to be merely
the spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essential
principle: mo