414 IMMORTALITY. 



the alternatives of " either fashioned by our parents 

 or by our spirit" are not so exclusive as they might 

 at first sight appear. For why should we not be 

 fashioned both by our parents and by our own past, 

 in different ways ? The possibility of this solution 

 appears at first somewhat of a mystery, but we 

 ought by this time to have acquired a sufficient dis- 

 trust of pseudo-mysteries not to jump at the con- 

 clusion that any difficulty we can formulate Is beyond 

 the bounds of the human reason. 



For, admitting the general doctrine that the char- 

 acter of the offspring Is Inherited from the parents, 

 we may raise the question of what determines the 

 particular mixture which constitutes a particular 

 character. The parents possess an Indefinite number 

 of potentialities that may possibly be Inherited, and 

 these, again, may be commingled in an indefinite 

 number of ways. But the character actually in- 

 herited is a defiitite combination of these potential 

 qualities, and what determines the way in which it 

 is actually combined.'* It is not enough to know 

 generally that the parents supply the materials of 

 the new combination ; we must know also what 

 arranges the materials in a definite order. 



Now If we supposed that this proportion in which 

 the various dispositions of the parents entered into 

 the character of the offspring was really determined 

 by the character of the spiritual entity which the 

 parents were capable of providing with a suitable 

 organism, we should at all events have devised a 

 method which rendered pre-existence compatible with 

 heredity. For there is no apparent break in the 

 chain of natural causes : the whole character of the 

 offspring is inherited from the parents. But as the 

 limits within which heredity is possible are very 



