GENEOLOGICAL. 399 



— which we may particularly associate with the 

 names of Mr. Francis Galton and Mr. Karl Pear- 

 son. 



(2) A second step is the further elucidation and 

 widespread acceptance of the idea which Virchow 

 was one of the first to state, — the somewhat subtle, 

 yet essentis^lly simple idea, which may be called 

 " the continuity of generations.''^ 



There is a sense, as Mr. Galton says, in which the 

 child is as old as the parent, for when the parent's 

 body is developing from the fertilised ovum, a resi- 

 due of unaltered germinal material is kept apart to 

 form the reproductive cells, one of which may be- 

 come the starting-point of a child. Similarly, Weis- 

 mann, generalising from cases where it seems to be 

 visibly demonstrable, maintains that the germinal 

 material (genn-plasm) which starts an offspring 

 owes its virtue to being materially continuous with 

 the germinal material from which the parent .. or 

 parents arose. 



(3) A third step is that we are learning not to 

 spell heredity with a capital. We no longer think 

 of it as a power or principle, as a fate or as one of 

 the forces of nature ; we study it as a relation of 

 genetic continuity between successive generations, in 

 a sense mysterious, as every fact of life is, but none 

 the less a relation sustained by a visible material 

 basis (the germ-cells) and expressing itself in re- 

 semblances and differences which can be measured 

 and weighed. 



The very terms " heredity," " heritage," " inherit- 

 ance," " transmit," are perhaps apt to deceive us by 

 their suggestion of a false analogy. In regard to 

 property there is a clear distinction between the heir 

 and the estate which he inherits; in regard to life 



