OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 107 



the name of a monstrosity, reappears in the offspring. But such cases 

 are infrequent, exceptional, and, at the utmost, not continued beyond two 

 or three generations. They are casual repetitions, such as are always 

 possible in the perpetual shifting and shuffling of individual traits >they 

 are not the results of hereditary transmission. Otherwise, — if a law 

 of nature favored the transmission, — all individual peculiarities would 

 successively disappear, being merged in specific traits, and each new 

 birth would present successively a more perfect copy of its parent, until 

 at last, all differences being effaced, individuals of the same species 

 could no more be distinguished from each other, than a heap of silver 

 coins freshly struck from the same die at the mint. But God's creative 

 processes are not thus mechanical ; infinite variety, no less than perfect 

 order, is a law of nature. 



The first argument, then, against the doctrine of hereditary resem- 

 blance, is founded on this admitted fact of the marvellous variety in 

 nature. Among millions of human faces, no two can be found so nearly 

 alike as to be mistaken one for another. All judicial inquiries, all 

 property in animate beings, rest upon the universal recognition of this 

 fact. Otherwise, a jury could never be satisfied that this man is the 

 horse-thief, and this horse is the very animal that he stole. Herein is 

 one striking difference between the organic and the inorganic king- 

 doms ; that whereas, in the latter, the laws of nature work with absolute 

 uniformity, the typical form, the typical act, being always exactly re- 

 produced ; in the former, the organic kingdom, the operation of the law 

 is infinitely varied, and Nature never exactly repeats herself. As in- 

 stances of the former, take the chemical composition of a drop of water 

 whencesoever obtained, the fall of a heavy body from a height, the 

 forms assumed by various crystallizing substances. In these cases, the 

 similarity is perfect ; man's machine-work offers but a faint copy of the 

 marvellous accuracy of nature's action and workmanship. For an in- 

 stance of the latter, take Leibnitz's challenge to his companions, to find 

 any two leaves upon the same tree or bush, one of which should be the 

 precise counterpai-t of the other. They could not. But the dividing 

 line is strongly marked and permanent between the personal or individ- 

 ual traits that are thus infinitely varied, and the specific traits which are 

 reproduced with great, but not absolute uniformity. The most striking 

 proof that there is a law of nature prohibiting the repetition of abnor- 

 mal forms is found in the fact, that, as the most fertile source of such 

 foi'ms is from the crossing of distinct races, nature invariably makes the 

 product of such crosses sterile or very short-lived. 



