118 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



efforts towards induction. Physical inheritance often 

 so burdens life, as to obscure the range of intellectual 

 gift in possession; and from a multitude of causes 

 besides, there is a vast amount of undeveloped talent. 

 In view of the incompleteness of evidence here, 

 definite inferences as to heredity in mind seem im 

 possible. It is certain that useful variation in organism 

 is transmitted; transmissions of variation in mental 

 power seem less obvious. There is an independence 

 in mind history impossible to bodily life. 



Some wider induction seems to await us here, 011 

 account of the unity in which the dualism we are re 

 marking is involved. Mind is not spiritualised body ; 

 nor is the human body itself spiritualised matter : but 

 there is a wonderful unity here, still beyond reach of 

 science. The soul life is so encompassed by physical 

 conditions, is in the history of the unfolding of its 

 powers so connected with physical aptitudes is so 

 dependent on physical sensibility and muscular 

 activity, for stimulus and outlet, that possibilities 

 of mental development must be much more closely 

 connected with the physical nature than we are as 

 yet able to ascertain. If organic life has, by slowly 

 accumulated acquisitions, proved equal to the task 

 of securing greater adaptations to environment, there 

 must be some large meaning here in the history of 

 mind as it has advanced towards extended conscious 

 ness of freedom and power. 



If, then, the origin of mind in the history of the 

 individual belongs to the unknown, how shall we 

 think of individual development, so as to keep within 

 the limits of our knowledge ? With man, germinal 

 life begins as does the life of the animal ; embryonic 



