84 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



influences emphasised. It is not, of course, only 

 the conscious that we inherit from the past ; we may 

 never know all that we are actually possessed of in 

 the way of ancestral traits, memories and experiences. 

 Just as we are able to have revived in us through 

 memory the world of our own individual long- 

 forgotten past, so, too, there may be stored up in 

 us and only in dreams revealed to us, some of the 

 world of the much longer forgotten past of the 

 race. We are born with an ancestral memory just 

 as with ancestral traits of habit and feature. 

 ' Unconsciously characteristic gestures and special 

 and peculiar traits, characteristics of handwriting, 

 and of thought itself, are transmitted from one 

 generation to another." * Possibly an ancestral 

 trait perpetuated through functional inertia may 

 lie dormant for many years in the life of the 

 individual ; thus some have explained the appearance 

 in exophthalmic goitre of the patient being ex- 

 tremely startled as the inheritance of the effect 

 of a violent fright or shock received by an 

 ancestor ; it is latent for a number of years and 

 then makes itself evident. On similar lines Professor 

 Stanley Hall explains dreams of flying as atavistic 

 revivals in cerebral protoplasm of memories of such 

 a mode of ancestral locomotion (always supposing 

 our descent is from a bird-like ancestor). f Simi- 

 larly certain cases of very long sleep (narcolepsy) 

 of weeks or months, have been explained as the 



* M. de Manaceine, " Sleep," Contemp. Science Series, p. 326. 

 (London: W, Scott, 1897.) f Ibid. p. 189, 



