QENEOLOGICAL. 399 



which we may particularly associate with the 

 names of Mr. Francis Galton and Mr. Karl Pear- 

 son. 



(2) A second step is the further elucidation and 

 widespread acceptance of the idea which Virchow 

 was one of the first to state, the somewhat subtle, 

 yet essentially simple idea, which may be called 

 " the continuity of generations." 



There is a sense, as Mr. Galton says, in which the 

 child is as old as the parent, for when the parent's 

 body is developing from the fertilised ovum, a resi- 

 due of unaltered germinal material is kept apart to 

 form the reproductive cells, one of which may be- 

 come the starting-point of a child. Similarly, Weis- 

 mann, generalising from cases where it seems to be 

 visibly demonstrable, maintains that the germinal 

 material (germ-plasm} which starts an offspring 

 owes its virtue to being materially continuous with 

 the germinal material from which the parent or 

 parents arose. 



(3) A third step is that we are learning not to 

 spell heredity with a capital. We no longer think 

 of it as a power or principle, as a fate or as one of 

 the forces of nature; we study it as a relation of 

 genetic continuity between successive generations, in 

 a sense mysterious, as every fact of life is, but none 

 the less a relation sustained by a visible material 

 basis (the germ-cells) and expressing itself in re- 

 semblances and differences which can be measured 

 and weighed. 



The very terms " heredity," " heritage," " inherit- 

 ance," " transmit," are perhaps apt to deceive us by 

 their suggestion of a false analogy. In regard to 

 property there is a clear distinction between the heir 

 and the estate which he inherits; in regard to life 



