POINTS FROM WHICH THE PROPORTIONS ARE STUDIED. 401 



It is evident that this reflective power in order to be utilized must 

 be served by organs not only well conformed, but also well adapted to 

 the special method of its manifestations. For example, an orchestra 

 may possess instruments of excellent quality when considered sepa- 

 rately ; its performers may be artists of the first rank, and yet the 

 combined eifect of all these musical factors will be full of discord if he 

 upon whom devolves the care of employing and directing them does 

 riot know how to manage them, or speaks in a language they do not 

 understand. However removed from our subject this comparison 

 may appear, it is none the less applicable here. The nervous system, 

 whatever may be its value as a reflective power, and the organs, what- 

 ever may be their mechanical perfection as locomotory agents, are 

 of little value without the harmonious relations of which we are 

 speaking. 



Whence is the "Blood" derived? The blood is hereditary, 

 as we have already seen ; it is also inborn in certain subjects belonging 

 to races which do not habitually possess it. And this innateness is the 

 consequence of the great probability that the hereditary qualities of 

 the species are unequally distributed to their descendants. This results 

 from the slow and dearly-bought triumph of the organism over the 

 surrounding medium. Even thus, the handful of wheat which is pro- 

 miscuously cast upon a fertile soil, and the grains of which are not 

 uniformly scattered on the soil, will produce in the future field places 

 more or less rich in sheaves ; so, also, the descendants of the species 

 are led by chance to develop in climates and upon grounds where they 

 will be able to preserve their qualities, acquire new ones, and transmit 

 them to their offspring, while others will succumb to the unfavorable 

 conditions of the medium. 



Every individual, therefore, is born more or less endowed, and his 

 very aptitudes vary in number and in development. He owes them to 

 his own parents in the case of immediate heredity ; to his ancestors in 

 that of indirect heredity. 



Finally, he may develop it in himself, for it is a fact equally demon- 

 strated that blood may be acquired. Magne l says, " It being the direct 

 product of food and air, it changes with the influences to which the 

 animals are exposed." 



It is increased by a special regimen and a particular education, as 

 the Arabians have done from antiquity, as the English still do at the 

 present day for their race-horses. The different and many methods 



' J.-H. Magne, loc. cit., p. 351. 

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