336 HEKEDITY. 



tains the potency of the hereditary qualities. This material sub- 

 stratum of heredity is termed the germinative plasma or germen. 

 The two sexual elements, ovum and spermatozoon, equivalent as to 

 their possession of germinative plasma, are gametes (from the Greek 

 gamos^ marriage) and the product of their fusion is a zygote (from 

 the Greek zygo, to yoke or join together). 



I call especial attention to the fact that the substance of the new 

 individual is the sum of the two germens derived from its parents. 

 Now, there is no doubt but that our qualities and our defects depend 

 upon our material structure. If the gametes are potent with health 

 and intelligence, the zygote has chances of being healthy and intelli- 

 gent; if the gametes are potent with idleness, insubordination, etc., 

 the zygote will probably be idle and disdainful of authority. Edu- 

 cation and the influence of the environment may perhaps modify 

 this heredity, but to what extent, we may ask. We here touch upon 

 llie grave and difficult question of moral responsibility, a problem 

 Avhich often comes up before courts of justice and before society, 

 and which we are obliged to admit is solved in an unsatisfactory 

 manner, but little in accord with the strict teachings of biology and 

 Avitli the properly understood interests of human social groups. 



For a long time observers confined themselves to showing that 

 characters of all sorts were transmitted, and to registering facts, 

 observations of breeders, peculiarities of well-known people. For 

 example, there was noted the transmission in the Hapsburgs of a 

 prognathous lower jaw, accompanied secondarily with an exagger- 

 ated development of the lower lip — the Austrian lip, as it is called — 

 quite marked in the present Emperor of Austria, in Alphonso XIII 

 (Hapsburg by his mother, Maria Christina, daughter of an arch- 

 duke of Austria), and many others; heredity of stature, of certain 

 diseases, of longevity or shortness of life, etc., were observed. 

 There were also noted at the same time apparent caprices in heredity. 

 A number of obserA^ed facts are found in the books of Darwin and 

 also in those of Lucas, whose ideas Zola ascribed to his Doctor Pascal 

 in the well-known novel that concludes the Rougon-Macquart series. 



It was felt, however, that under this chaos there must be laws. 

 An endeavor was made to discover them by collecting and analyzing 

 statistics in considerable numbers, extracted for the most part from 

 books recording the genealogy of dogs and race horses. An attempt 

 was made to deduce from these statistics the frequency with which 

 a given character is inherited, or, in other terms, to determine the 

 proportional influence which the different ancestors of an individual 

 have upon his characteristics. This so-called '"' biometric " method 

 has indeed furnished an approximate law — the law of Galton — but it 

 has not fulfilled the expectations that were based upon it. Since the 

 statistics confound under one designation, forms which may be pro- 



