. Evolution and its relation to religious thought . ac-counts. Let it be borne in mind, then («), that inheritanceis not only from the immediate parents, but from thewhole line of ancestry. The inheritance from the im-mediate parents is, doubtless, usually greater than fromany other one term of the ancestral series—the effecton the offspring of any previous generation becomes,doubtless, less and less as the distance from the off-spring increases—yet the sum of the ancestral inherit-ance is far greater than the immediate jiarental. Letit also be borne in mind {h) that true breeding fromone form
. Evolution and its relation to religious thought . ac-counts. Let it be borne in mind, then («), that inheritanceis not only from the immediate parents, but from thewhole line of ancestry. The inheritance from the im-mediate parents is, doubtless, usually greater than fromany other one term of the ancestral series—the effecton the offspring of any previous generation becomes,doubtless, less and less as the distance from the off-spring increases—yet the sum of the ancestral inherit-ance is far greater than the immediate jiarental. Letit also be borne in mind {h) that true breeding fromone form for many generations creates a fund of he-redity in that form, and thus tends to produce fixity,rigidity, or permanence in that form. Now, the method of producing artificial breeds, some- 206 EVIDENCES OF THE TRUTH OF EYOLUTIOX. times consciously, sometimes unconsciously, is, briefly,as follows : Suppose it be desired to obtain a yarietyof an animal, say a dog, having a certain start from a common type, a (Fig. 68). If this type. Tig. CS. were allowed to breed naturally, the slight divergentvariation of offspring represented by the radiating lineswould neutralize one another by interbreeding, the indi-vidual differences would be ^^poolecV in a commonstock, and the S2:>ecies would remain substantially con-stant. But if among all these slightly divergent vari-eties we select one, 1), which seems in the right direc-tion, and ruthlessly destroy all the others (indicated bycrossing them out by the circular line), and breed thisvariety, l, only, we shall get again a number of di-vergent varieties. It may be that the larger numberof these will be backward, in the direction of the orig-inal type «, on account of the ancestral heredity inthat direction, but some will again be in the desireddirection. Let all the varieties other than the desiredone, but especially the backward-going or revertingones, be again destroyed, and the one kind only selectedwhich seems to
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