Physiological and Psychological Heredity. 271 



to pure intellect * beyond time and space/ we have already spoken 

 of it when treating of the heredity of the intellectual faculties. 



If we examine this doctrine, we shall find that it is with it as 

 with all metaphysical hypotheses ; we might refute it, but we can- 

 not extirpate it. The great objection appears reducible to this: 

 that the idea of generation, which is its basis, is utterly unintelli- 

 gible from the idealistic point of view. The idea of generation, 

 in the psychological sense, might be understood in the hypothesis 

 of the equivalence or mutual transformation of two groups of 

 phenomena which are regarded as essentially identical. But that 

 is not the thesis of the idealist. In his view there exists but one 

 only substance, thought, and of this all others are the manifesta- 

 tions. The idea of generation and hereditary transmission results 

 from experience, and can be given only in experience ; if these 

 phenomena are full of mystery they are none the less real, since 

 we may track their course, their evolution. But when you apply 

 them to the ideal, the supersensual order, they represent nothing 

 they are but metaphors, empty words, hollow abstractions, since 

 there are no concrete things to which they may be referred. 



About a century ago, Wollaston, a spiritualistic, even a Christian 

 philosopher, justly said in his essay, The Religion of Nature 

 Delineated, that in the purely ideal order, the fact of generation is 

 unintelligible. 'We should have to explain clearly,' says he, 'what 

 we mean, when we say that a man can transmit the soul, as it is 

 not easy to conceive how thought, or how a thinking substance, 

 could be produced like the branch of a tree. Indeed, we do not 

 see how the expression can be employed, even in a metaphysical 

 sense. We should have to define whether this generation proceeds 

 from one, or from both of the parents. If from both, then it 

 follows that one branch may be the product of two different trunks, 

 a thing unexampled in all nature ; and yet such a supposition 

 would be more naturally made with reference to vines and plants, 

 than to intellectual beings, which are simple and incomposite sub- 

 stances. . . . From these considerations we are led to the conclu- 

 sion that there is no other substance save matter ; that the soul, 

 resulting only from the disposition of the body, must be born with 

 it, of father or mother, or both ; and that the generation of the 

 soul is a consequence of the generation of the body.' Wollaston 



