Exceptions to the Law of Heredity.. 213 



into hysteria, and vice versh; or lypemania will take the place of 

 pulmonary consumption, hysteria, hypochondria, epilepsy. 



To sum up briefly what has been said : M. Lemoine, in his 

 study on Morbid Psychology ', has made a very just criticism on 

 this resort to two laws, the one of spontaneity and the other of 

 heredity, both reciprocally supplying each other's defects. ' When 

 the one is at fault,' says he, ' and puts the system in danger of 

 failure, the other is hastily adduced, and everything is set right 

 with a word. A madman's son is a madman : the law of heredity 

 is invoked to explain his insanity. An idiot is born of parents 

 and descends from ancestors who are all of sound body and mind : 

 spontaneity is invoked to account for the fact.' We hold, with 

 Lemoine, that spontaneity thus understood is an occult quality, an 

 explanation that explains nothing, like the Quia esi in eo virtus 

 dormitiva. 



But M. Lemoine, speaking of the reduction of spontaneity to 

 heredity, adds : ' The reduction of these two laws to one is rather 

 ingenious than legitimate, for it appears to me that the law of 

 spontaneity should rather absorb the law of heredity. If we 

 ascend from generation to generation, we certainly do not always 

 find lunatics the children of lunatics, or idiots the children of 

 epileptics. But at length we shall be more fortunate; probably 

 in the distant past, not so far back as the deluge, we shall find a 

 lunatic, or epileptic, or idiot, who is the child of parents and 

 ancestors, sound of mind and body in short, an idiosyncrasy. 

 This idiosyncrasy, whatever it may be, is the starting-point, is the 

 pattern after which nature has fashioned all the descending gen- 

 erations. In creating this first case of disease, whensoever it 

 appeared, nature acted freely. On the contrary, when she trans- 

 mits disease as a heritage from fathers to children, she does but 

 imitate herself, and copy her own model. The law of spontaneity 

 explains the law of heredity, instead of being explained by it, if, 

 indeed, it explains anything.' 



To our mind there is here a confusion of two questions, which 

 it is important for us to notice : a metaphysical question regarding 

 the first cause, and a scientific question concerning secondary 

 causes. 



If we take metaphysical and transcendental ground which we 



