HEREDITY HAS NO POWER, ETC. 89 



inary person, without any striking features, more 

 easily than he could paint a particular man with all 

 his peculiarities; as, for example, his bald head, high 

 forehead, blue eyes, long aquiline nose, wide mouth, 

 massive lower jaw and tall, slender body. The closer 

 the resemblance, between the child and its parents, the 

 greater the mystery. 



It being a fact that the body of the child has 

 identically the same organs and parts that are formed 

 in the body of its father, or in that of the mother ; and 

 that the child closely resembles one or both of them, 

 we naturally inquire : * * What force or agency causes 

 the germ-cell and its daughter-cells to develop and 

 grow until they become a man, like its father; or a 

 woman like its mother ? We cannot even imagine that 

 this sameness of organs and parts, of structure, form 

 and size, and this close resemblance happens by chance 

 or accident. 



Every man has conscious knowledge that he had 

 no voluntary part in the production of his child, ex- 

 cept that he placed the spermatozoon at a point from 

 which it could reach the ovum. The mother knows 

 that she had no voluntary part nor agency in the pro- 

 duction of her child except that she permitted the 

 father to place the spermatozoon in reach of the ovum. 

 Neither of them has any voluntary power, nor any 

 control over the formation of the spermatozoon nor of 

 the ovum; nor over the development and growth of 

 the child, nor over its structure, form, size nor over 

 its features. 



The spermatozoon is a microscopic cell, 1 /500th 

 of an inch in length, (Martin, Human Body, p. 651), 



