Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 83 



states of others,' * to have a community of sentiments with a man 

 or an animal is to resemble him in one respect ; it means being 

 at once ourselves and another. Our selfish and our sympathetic 

 tendencies are, therefore, both equally natural, but the former are 

 based upon our own nature, the latter on an analogy with it 

 The admirable researches of physiologists on the sympathetic 

 contagion of nervous diseases, may some day serve as the basis 

 for new studies on the emotions. This is not the place to 

 enter on them ; we would merely show that phenomena of the 

 affections pertain to our inmost being. By this fact of cognition 

 the outer world is let in upon us, and is reproduced in miniature, 

 for thought is nothing but existence arriving at self-consciousness ; 

 but our feeble personality is associated with this impersonal state 

 by the pleasures and pains it produces in us ; for sensation and 

 volition make us what we are. The modes of sensibility are so 

 intimately connected with the organs, and with the whole con- 

 stitution, that, a priori, we might conclude that they are transmitted 

 by heredity. Experience will be found to verify this hypothesis. 



II. 



We can cite only striking facts that is to say, passions so violent 

 or so extravagant as to attract the attention of the physician or 

 the historian ; yet any one, by questioning his own memory, may 

 easily see that certain modes of sensation, and, consequently, of 

 action, may be preserved hereditarily in families too obscure for 

 notice. 



First, then, in animals the transmission of individual character 

 is a fact so common as scarcely to need illustration. ' A horse 

 that is naturally vicious, sulky, and restive,' says Buffon, 'will 

 beget foals with the same character.' Every horse-breeder has 

 verified this fact in regard to his stud. 



' Heredity,' says Girou de Buzareingues, ' may, even in animals, 

 extend to their most whimsical peculiarities. A hound taken from 

 the teat, and bred far away from either parent, was incorrigibly 

 obstinate and gun shy in circumstances where other dogs were 



'Bain, The Emotions, ch. xii., 'On Sympathy.' The entire chapter should 

 be studied. 



