Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook.
- Josephus Flavius Cook
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![186 HEREDITY. tained the law of co-equal heredity, and by it has maintained the law of monogamy as the natural ideal. I defy anj'' man who reveres the scientific method, or who loves to think boldly, north, south, east, and west, to look into the arrangements of nature on this topic, and find support for any other party than God's own, as a guide for future civilization. I should be almost willing, were men sure to obey wholly the dictates of what we call nature, to leave the justification of monogamy exclusively to those who correctly under¬ stand co-equal and initial heredity. Did Shakspeare know of what he was talking when he spoke of the green-eyed monster called jealousy? Have the poets in all ages been blind when they have asserted that there are passions through which the words mine and thine obtain terrific emphasis inside the range of social and family life ? If the law of co-equal heredity proclaims monogamy, so does that of initial heredity. If there is to be a supreme affec¬ tion, there is, of course, to be a guarding of it ; and if the poets, if the philosophers, if all who have studied the human heart, are not wrong in assigning to jealousy a force sufficient to burst social mountains, makincr ' О them crack open like so much baked volcanic clay, in revulsion after revulsion ; if jealousy has always been one of the high explosives in human history, you may put this force, too, on the side of monogamy, for there is where God intended that its power should be ex¬ pended. 4. The average ability of the race is not equal to its j present tasks. Galton says that men in modern times are in danger of being drudged into imbecility. There is hardly any class of the advanced intellectual labourers of the world that does not need a higher grade of ability to meet its tasks. You, sir, [turning to the Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs,] were telling us last evening, how to solve the great prablem of the government of cities. You were showing us how cities reach all the globe ; and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18030051_0195.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
