The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins.
Why should it be?
He did not desire it.

Was he to blame?
But McTeague could not understand this thing.

It had faced him, as sooner or later it faces every child of man; but its significance was not for him.

To reason with it was beyond him.

He could only oppose to it an instinctive stubborn resistance, blind, inert.
McTeague went on with his work.