Note 213 — Chapter VII

Anything more completely opposed to the Micawber type could hardly be conceived, and yet there were moments (really and truly only moments) when the fancy would arise that if the conditions of his life had been reversed, something of a vagabond existence (using the word in Goldsmith's meaning) might have supervened. It would have been an unspeakable misery to him, but it might have come nevertheless. The question of hereditary transmission had a curious attraction for him, and considerations connected with it were frequently present to his mind. Of a youth who had fallen into a father's weaknesses without the possibility of having himself observed them for imitation, he thus wrote on one occasion: "It suggests the strangest consideration as to which of our own failings we are really responsible, and as to which of them we cannot quite reasonably hold ourselves to be so. What A. evidently derived from his father cannot in his case be derived from association and observation, but must be in the very principles of his individuality as a living creature."