What we know of prenatal development makes all thi s attempt made by a mother to mold the character o f her unborn child by studying poetry,art,or mathe matics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible.Ho w could such extremely complex influences pass fro m the mother to the child?There is no connection b etween their nervous systems.Even the blood vessel s of mother and child do not join directly.An emot ional shock to the mother will affect her child,be cause it changes the activity of her glands and so the chemistry in her blood.Any chemical change in the mother’s blood will affect the child for bett er or worse.But we cannot see how a looking for ma thematics or poetic genius can be dissolved in blo od and produce a similar liking or genius in the child. In our discussion of instincts we saw that there was reason to believe that whatever we inherit must be of some very simple sort rather than any complicated or very definite kind of behavior.It is certain that no one inherits a knowledge of mathematics.It may be,however,that children inherit more or less of a rather general ability that we may call intelligence.If very intelligent children become deeply interested in mathematics,they will probably make a success of that study. As for musical ability,it may be that what is inhe rited is an especiallysensitive ear,apeculiar stru cture of the hands or the vocal organs connections between nerves and muscles that make it comparati vely easy to learn the movements a musician must e xecute,and particularly vigorous emotions.If these factors are all organized around music,the child may become a musician.The same factors,in other ci rcumstance,might be organized about some other cen ter of interest.The rich emotional equipment might find expression in poetry.The capable fingers mig ht develop skill in surgery.It is not the knowledg e of music that is inherited,then nor even the lov e of it,but a certain bodily structure that makes it comparatively easy to acquire musical knowledge and skill.Whether that ability shall be directed toward music or some other undertaking may be deci ded entirely by forces in the environment in which a child grows up.