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ducted. Let us therefore, as such is the highest success to which 

 we might aspire at this time, be contented to state our deduction, 

 or corollary, respecting the share which the first properties of the 

 ovum have in subsequent phenomena, whether of health or of disease. 



29, If the original properties of the ovum have, with respect 

 to the subsequent processes, the importance only of remote causes, 

 then the nature, order, &c. of such changes are determined by 

 these properties of the ovum, although the respective effects which 

 occur in catenated causation may be constituted by properties 

 acquired from the external world. And whatever differences might 

 occur in the development of two animals of the same species, they 

 are to be referred to an original peculiarity in the respective ova, 

 which, being differently constituted, run through a series of different 

 relations, and of course exhibit different phenomena. If the pro- 

 cesses of development, c. are to be attributed to progressive 

 change, going on between properties originally possessed by the 

 ovum, each property, as it passes from the latent to the active 

 form, producing as a constituent its own effect, then also the 

 phenomena of development, conversion, c. are to be attributed 

 to the original constitution of the ovum: in their first case this con- 

 stitution is preparatory to subsequent occurrences; in the second 

 case they are contributary, or have the importance of a real cause, 

 which is that without which the effect cannot exist. We have, it 

 is said, no satisfactory criterion by which either of these alternatives 

 may, in particular cases, be positively adopted. 



30. We observe in the intellectual system, that its phenomena 

 concern chiefly the acquired properties, viz. the ideas which are ac- 

 quired, or formed with the help of the intellectual predisposition. 

 We see also that the information of the mind and its peculiarities in 

 individuals, take their determinate character from the intellectual 

 predisposition; it is this which directs and produces all the variety 

 of opinion, and the infinite motives to action in different individuals, 

 surrounded by the same externals, or existing in nearly similar cir- 

 cumstances. Yet here there is similitude in the offspring to an 

 original in the parent, as in the corporeal phenomena. The testes 

 begin to secrete at sixteen ; a person becomes consumptive at five- 

 and-twenty, whose mother died of consumption perhaps at about the 

 same age; a person at three-and-thirty becomes deranged in mind, 

 whose father or grandfather was deranged at about the same period. 

 Here it would appear, as if properties, in all these cases, which 

 could specifically determine these events^ belpnged to the ovum, 

 and remained latent until they were developed by that progressive 

 causation which we have attempted to describe. On the other hand, 

 we know that insanity engages principally the acquired properties 

 of the mind or its ideas ; for the form of insan.ity may consist in 

 disordered judgment or inference, and perhaps only on one subject, 

 the act of which consists in the comparison of ideas, from the ana- 

 logy of which an inference is made: or tlje form of insaiiity may 



