22 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



bodies of the parents generate the body of the child, and that correspond- 

 ingly the souls of the parents generate the soul of the child. Now we 

 know that the child comes from germ cells which are not made by the 

 bodies of the parents, but which have arisen by the division of antecedent 

 germ cells. Every cell comes from a preexisting cell by a process of 

 division, and every germ cell comes from a preexisting germ cell. Con- 

 sequently it is not possible to hold that the body generates germ cells, 

 nor that the soul generates souls. The only possible scientific position 

 is that the mind (or soul) as well as the body develops from the germ. 



No fact in human experience is more certain than that the mind 

 develops by gradual and natural processes from a simple condition which 

 can scarcely be called mind at all ; no fact in human experience is fraught 

 with greater practical and philosophical significance than this; and yet 

 no fact is more generally disregarded. We know that the greatest men 

 of the race were once babies, embryos, germ cells, and that the greatest 

 minds in human history were once the minds of babies, embryos and 

 germ cells, and yet this stupendous fact has had but little influence on 

 our beliefs as to the nature of man and of mind. We rarely think of 

 Plato and Aristotle, of Shakespeare and Newton, of Pasteur and Dar- 

 win, except in their full epiphany, and yet we know that when each of 

 these was a child he " thought as a child and spake as a child," and when 

 he was a germ cell he behaved as a germ cell. 



The development of the mind from the activities of the germ cells is 

 certainly most wonderful and mysterious, but probably no more so than 

 the development of the complicated body of the adult animal from the 

 structures of the germ. Both belong to the same order of phenomena 

 and there is no more reason for supposing that the mind is super- 

 naturally created than that the body is. Indeed, we know that the mind 

 is formed by a process of development, and the stages of this develop- 

 ment are fairly well known. There is nowhere in the entire course of 

 mental development a sudden appearance of psychical process, but 

 rather a gradual development of these from simpler and simpler begin- 

 nings. No detailed study has been made of the reactions of human germ 

 cells and embryos, but there is every reason to believe that these reactions 

 are simpler in the embryo and germ cell than in the infant, and they are 

 generally similar to the reactions of the germ cells and embryos of other 

 animals and to the behavior of many lower organisms. 



A few years ago such a statement would have been branded as 

 "materialism" and promptly rejected without examination by those who 

 are frightened by names. But the general spread of the scientific spirit 

 is shown not only by the growing regard for evidence, but also by the 

 decreasing power of epithets. "Materialism," like many another ghost, 

 fades away into thin air or at least loses many of its terrors, when closely 

 scrutinized. But the statement that mind develops from the germ cells 

 is not an affirmation of materialism, for while it identifies the origin of 



