Are there Laws of Heredity? 139 



controls everything relating to vital force, but does not control the 

 indigenous or exotic qualities of the inner sense : or, in plainer 

 language, unconscious modes of vital activity are hereditary ; not 

 so the conscious modes.' 



The objection so formulated is vague, and has but little force if 

 closely pressed; it rests on the idea of an absolute distinction 

 between body and mind an idea which, if it were admissible in 

 Descartes' day, is so no longer. But if we look less at the letter 

 than at the spirit of the objection less at what it says than at 

 what it means to say we must acknowledge that it raises a nice 

 question, on which now we do but touch, but which will hereafter 

 be discussed. 



Among the 'moral qualities' appertaining to the body are 

 reckoned in the first rank sensations and perceptions. 



The organism is inherited, and with it the organs of sense and 

 their functions. But the imagination depends in great measure on 

 our faculty of sense, and sensations with sensorial images are the 

 raw material of cognition. It is no longer maintained that they 

 are sufficient to constitute it. We know that the mind adds some- 

 what, and that the phenomena are moulded by causality, time, and 

 space. These conditions of all thought the subjective forms of 

 the mind, according to Kant ; the preformations of the organism, 

 according to the physiologists are universal, common to all men, 

 and consequently, without exception, hereditary. 



If we set aside for the moment the question of intellectual 

 activity, and consider only the sentiments, emotions, and passions ; 

 we may yet be justified in placing these among those 'moral 

 qualities which appertain to the body.' It will be readily admitted 

 that the emotions differ accordingly as the person who experiences 

 them is of lymphatic or nervous, of bilious or sanguine tempera- 

 ment : and these original dispositions are the source whence 

 afterwards spring our most complex sentiments. 



Hence, when closely examined, this assumed difference between 

 the 'moral qualities which appertain to the mind,' and those which 

 ' appertain to the body,' entirely disappears. We seek it, and find 

 it not for it is not. Heredity has been willingly admitted in 

 regard to certain inferior psychical conditions, and it was supposed 

 that thus full justice was rendered to this principle ; but, logically 



