Note 54:1 — INTRODUCTION.[vii:1]

Or, “Is not God wiser than Hesiod?” With this interrogative construction, which the sentence will bear, the sense is,—“Hesiod teaches the hereditary transmission of character as a fact; God, still more, traces these inherited traits before they appear to human view.” According to the rendering that I have given, the sense is,—“The transmission of character from father to son is recognized not only by God in his providence, but equally by wise men, as, for instance, by Hesiod.”