2 7o Heredity. 



If we might be allowed to have an opinion on this subject, we 

 should say that the second opinion would appear the more or- 

 thodox. But we will take the philosophical point of view, and 

 since the idealists say nothing about the relation between the two 

 forms of heredity, we shall have to indicate that relation ourselves. 

 In their system, their logic would lead us to view this relation as 

 follows : 



We will start with the fertilized ovum, that source of every- 

 thing that lives. This ovum is not merely an aggregation of 

 molecules, which the physiologist studies under the microscope ; 

 it is also, and above all, a force, that is to say, a manifestation of the 

 soul. Admit if you will (for we idealists have no great liking for 

 this hypothesis) that this soul inherits from its parents certain 

 determinate forms of sensitive, intellectual, and voluntary activity, 

 and that it contains these virtually. The soul thus constituted 

 now sets about fashioning its body. Follow its labours from that 

 moment which caused Harvey so much astonishment, when he 

 saw slender threads like those of a spider's web, stretch out from 

 one corner to another of the matrix, and then saw this network 

 forming a sac which held a white liquid in which appeared the 

 punctum saliens. Follow this evolution, whose aspect changes 

 sometimes from hour to hour, and whose instability affects the 

 most essential no less than the most accessory portions, so that 

 it might be said that the unseen workman is feeling his way, and 

 that he completes his work only after many a mistake. Pursue 

 your observations to the moment when embryonic life is at an end 

 and extra-uterine life begins, and then see how evolution still goes 

 on, until the being is fully constituted ; and you must confess, 

 perhaps unwillingly, that all this is wonderful work, which, in spite 

 of errors, anomalies, and deviations, is not the effect of chance, 

 and that it is not without intelligence, though without conscious- 

 ness. And observe : here the soul is the cause, the organism the 

 effect; consequently, the conclusion is quite natural that the nature 

 of the soul implies that of the body, and that the ground of 

 physiological heredity is to be sought in psychological heredity. 



Thus, as we believe, and without weakening it at all, this pro- 

 position might be maintained. As for transcendental idealism, 

 which regards as simply physiological all that does not appertain 



