Essays on Life 



less, that occasional periods of even rapid 

 change are not held to bar identity, appears 

 from the fact that no one denies this to hold 

 between the microscopically small impregnate 

 ovum and the born child that springs from it, 

 nor yet, therefore, between the impregnate 

 ovum and the octogenarian into which the 

 child grows ; for both ovum and octogenarian 

 are held personally identical with the new- 

 born baby, and things that are identical with 

 the same are identical with one another. 



The first, then, and most important element 

 of heredity is that there should be unbroken 

 continuity, and hence sameness of personality, 

 between parents and offspring, in neither more 

 nor less than the same sense as that in which 

 any other two personalities are said to be 

 the same. The repetition, therefore, of its 

 developmental stages by any offspring must 

 be regarded as something which the embryo 

 repeating them has already done once, in the 

 person of one or other parent ; and if once, 

 then, as many times as there have been 

 generations between any given embryo now 



repeating it, and the point in life from which 



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