2 2o COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



Again we are forbidden to fall back on mysticism, or to 

 omit the discovery of a physical and mechanical cause. 

 There must be gemmules from far-away ancestors 

 developing in each child. It follows that in each 

 embryo some gemmules must fail to develop, but, 

 instead of perishing, must pass on as gemmules, with all 

 their latent qualities ; must enter with other gemmules 

 into new packets constituting ova or spermatozoa, and 

 must find their chance of development in a later genera- 

 tion by a triumph of atavism. Thus it is only partially 

 true in Darwin's opinion that the parent organism and the 

 reproductive material are in full sympathetic reciprocity. 

 Distinct part of the latter, according to Darwin, though 

 in this generation is not of this generation ; though 

 living in, and by, the living body of the adult of to-day, 

 it owes its origin to other bodies, whose qualities it 

 hopes one day to reproduce when its chance arrives. 

 The owl comes from the egg, but the egg comes only 

 in part from the parent owls. Another distinct part 

 of the living embryonic substance owes its being to 

 older birds. Mr. Francis Galton, great experimentalist 

 and statistician, has arrived at a formula for the higher 

 races. One-fourth he calculates belongs to each parent, 

 one-sixteenth to each grand-parent, and the remaining 

 aliquot part of one-fourth, I presume, to remoter genera- 

 tions still. 



It must not be supposed, however, that Galton 

 agrees with Darwin in believing in pangenesis. His 

 position is much more nearly that of Weismann. He 

 can only hold that one -fourth part in each of the 

 offspring is (on the average ?) like in quality to the 

 father or mother, not, as Darwin might do, that the 

 child owes its being and nature in the proportion of 

 one-fourth to the father, and the same to the mother. 



