216 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



ascending scale of psychic perfectibility, and counts 

 upon an indefinite period to continue his progress. 



Psychic heredity is the continuation of psychic 

 adaptation. Healthy parents produce a healthy 

 offspring, and the latter must necessarily be like 

 the former, for as individuals they are the product 

 of one and the same cause, correspondence with 

 the external. Strictly, heredity is not a fault 

 essential to the individual, but the healthy child is 

 the reproduction of the healthy parent, since every 

 organisation is under the inductive power of Nature, 

 and represents different periods of the same thing. 



We say healthy parents, because the phenomenon 

 of induction of natural forces on to the organism 

 can alone engender similar beings when the 

 organisms are well constituted, that is to say, 

 when formula N represents molecular equilibrium, 

 and there can be no further difference between 

 parents and children than the slight alteration 

 which a greater adaptation to the external pre- 

 supposes for a new generation. That is to say, the 

 psychic progress attained by the parent serves for 

 the child, who in his turn will produce other 

 adaptations, from which his descendants will 

 benefit. 



Humanity, considered as a whole, is the repre- 

 sentation of a force. Each one of its individual 

 parts or generations marks the fullness of the wave 



