8o Heredity* 



SWIFT. The poet Dryden was his grand-uncle. 

 TROLLOPE, Mrs., the novelist; 



Two sons, Anthony and Thomas, novelists, 



The list might easily have been extended, but the names here 

 given are probably sufficient for our purpose. 



CHAPTER VI. 



HEREDITY OF THE SENTIMENTS AND THE PASSIONS. 



L 



MAN is situated in the midst of the universe, which acts upon 

 him only by its properties. Colours, odours, savours, forms, 

 resistances, movements, become modes of our organism, producing 

 therein a shock to the nerves. Then all these peripheric im- 

 pressions pass to the brain, probably into the optic thalami ; and, 

 being thence transmitted to the cortical substance of the brain, 

 they are transformed, we know not how, into facts of consciousness : 

 the physiological phenomenon becomes psychological, consti- 

 tuting that state of the mind which we denominate cognition. 

 But this is not all. The nerve-vibrations produced by material 

 objects not only make us acquainted with something outside of us, 

 but they also produce within us a certain agreeable or disagreeable 

 state, which we call feeling. If there were no such reverberation 

 of pleasure or pain within us, then our experiences of the external 

 world would be, as Bichat says, ' only a frigid series of intellectual 

 phenomena.' 



Those phenomena of sensation of which the subjective cha- 

 racter is opposed to the objective character of the phenomena of 

 cognition may have an ideal as well as a real cause. Experience 

 shows that pure concepts simple ideas may not only be acts of 

 consciousness, but may also produce in us agreeable or painful 

 conditions. Thus, whoever conceives the ideal of a future state of 

 society, with a larger measure of justice, morality, science, and 

 happiness, simultaneously with his perception of this fair vision 

 is pleasurably affected by the sight of what might be, painfully by 

 the sight of what is. 



If we add that pleasure and pain may be excited in us either 



