1 38 Heredity. 



would place between man and animals a chasm which has no 

 existence. From either the physical or the mental point of view 

 it is impossible to make man a being, apart, to set up a 'human 

 kingdom.' It is, no doubt, too daring to say, as some have done 

 in our own time, 1 that there is nothing in man which is not found 

 also in the animal, whether it be language, or the faculty of count- 

 ing (the magpie counts up to seven), or moral ideas, or the 

 sentiment of veneration and awe, which is the basis of the religious 

 sentiment. But setting aside these hypothetical assertions, and 

 these exaggerations in the opposite sense, which always cha- 

 racterize a reaction, it is certain that, in the transition from the 

 animal to the human, the axiom of Linnaeus remains true, Natura 

 non facit saltus. Heredity is a biological law, which itself results 

 from another law that of the transfer, by generation, of the 

 attributes of physical and mental life : and the laws of generation 

 govern everything that lives the plant as well as the animal, or 

 as well as man. As we shall see hereafter, there is not one part 

 of the domain of life subject to the laws of heredity and another 

 part exempt from them. 



So chimerical is Lordat's hypothesis that, even in a psychologi- 

 cal study of heredity, we must not think of separating the animal 

 from the man. We must take one after another all the modes of 

 mental life, and see how they are influenced by heredity, as well 

 under the lower, or animal form, as under the higher, or human 

 form. This we have tried to do here, but very roughly, since this 

 work is but an essay ; yet, in the absence of a comparative 

 psychology which might serve as a basis and plan for our ex- 

 position, we are compelled to grope our way. 



Another doctrine, maintained by Virey, holds that we must 

 distinguish 'between the moral qualities which appertain to the 

 body, and the moral qualities which belong to the soul : ' the 

 former are transmissible by heredity, the latter are not And 

 Lordat defends a similar thesis. ' In man,' he says, ' heredity 



followers have so persistently taught. But if these two heredities present 

 different laws, we are justified in questioning the identity of the two 

 dynamisms.' 



1 See the Bulletins de la Soci6t6 if Anthropoloie, I 4re serie, vol. vi., et 3^ 

 serie, vol. i. 



