WHAT WE MIGHT EXPECT. 185 



mental endowments and bodily powers are all inherited " 

 ("Plants and Animals," &c, vol. ii. p. 367, ed. 1875). 



"Nothing," he continues, "in the whole circuit of 

 physiology is more wonderful. How can the use or 

 disuse of a particular limb, or of the brain, affect a 

 small aggregate of reproductive cells, seated in a distant 

 part of the body in such a manner that the being deve- 

 loped from these cells inherits the character of one or 

 both parents ? Even an imperfect answer to this ques- 

 tion would be satisfactory " (" Plants and Animals," &c. 

 vol. ii. p. 367, ed. 1875). 



With such an imperfect answer will I attempt to 

 satisfy the reader, as to say that there appears to be 

 that kind of continuity of existence and sameness of 

 personality, between parents and offspring, which would 

 lead us to expect that the impressions made upon the 

 parent should be epitomised in the offspring, when they 

 have been or have become important enough, through 

 repetition in the history of several so-called existences 

 to have earned a place in that smaller edition, which 

 is issued from generation to generation; or, in other 

 words, when they have been made so deeply, either 

 at one blow or through many, that the offspring can 

 remember them. In practice we observe this to be 

 the case — so that the answer lies in the assertion that 

 offspring and parent, being in one sense but the same 

 individual, there is no great wonder that, in one sense, 

 the first should remember what had happened to the 

 latter ; and that too, much in the same way as the in- 

 dividual remembers the events in the earlier history 

 of what he calls his own lifetime, but condensed, and 



