THE LAW OF HEREDITY 3 



ject of much controversy, and will be considered 

 later. 



"Heredity," says Ribot, "is that biological law 

 by which all beings endowed with life tend to 

 repeat themselves in their descendants ; it is for 

 the species what personal identity is for the indi- 

 vidual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged 

 amid incessant variation ; by it Nature ever copies 

 and imitates herself." ^ According to Weismann, 

 it is " the process which renders possible that per- 

 sistence of organic beings throughout successive 

 generations, which is generally thought to be so 

 well understood and to need no special explana- 

 tion." ^ It is "that property of an organism by 

 which its peculiar nature is transmitted to its 

 descendants."^ Each child not only is related 

 to the whole race as a species, but is in a peculiar 

 sense the offspring of individuals, bearing within 

 him signs of his parentage, not only in his bodily 

 organism, but also, with equal clearness, in his 

 mental and spiritual constitution.'* And this an- 

 cestral influence is so prevailing that the charac- 

 teristics of the child and all his tendencies, if not 



^ Heredity', Ribot, ji__u 



2 Essays on Heredity, Weismann, Oxford Translation, p. 71. 



8 Ibid. p. 72. 



* A Physician's Problems, Elam, p. I. 



