HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION 113 



evidence, we are left to draw inferences from the 

 mental characteristics of men, recognising first that 

 which is common to the species, afterwards variations 

 giving distinctiveness to individual life. 



In attempting to reach conclusions attainable in 

 this way, we see at once that in human life there is 

 something distinctive in the relations of parent and 

 child. The common vital relation is implied in the 

 virtual life-unity of parent and child. Life-unity must, 

 however, have a larger meaning here, unless we are to 

 maintain that the higher rational life of the parent 

 is out of relation with the embryonic life within. 

 The supposition seems inadmissable. The relation 

 of the living germ to the parent body may, however, 

 reasonably supply some analogy, in accordance with 

 which we may, not unwarrantably, think of the 

 relation of the child-soul to the parent-soul. The 

 value of such an analogy is however difficult to 

 determine. The beginnings of mental life may be 

 held to belong to the life of the embryo. This 

 conclusion is not affected by the fact that the dawn 

 of consciousness the first intelligent discrimination 

 of the self from the not-self which is the first 

 independent action of a rational life, belongs to a 

 period considerably after birth. True as it is, that 

 knowledge, as a conscious possession, begins with 

 independent experience on the part of the knower, 

 this does not render it less probable that the 

 beginnings of intelligent life are responsive to the 

 experience and action of the mature intelligence of 

 the parent. It seems improbable may we not say 

 impossible that a mother can give birth to a child 

 without the heritage of the young life including not 



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