l8 Heredity and Child Culture 



spects bears a likeness to latent or potential 

 interacting energy, while in other respects it is 

 entirely unique. The supposed germ energy 

 is not only cumulative but is in a sense imper- 

 ishable, self -perpetuating, and continuous dur- 

 ing the whole period of the evolution of life 

 upon the earth.* * * * * While we owe to 

 matter and form the revelation of the existence 

 of the great law of evolution, we must reverse 

 our thought in the search for causes and take 

 steps toward an energy conception of the origin 

 of life and an energy conception of the nature 

 of heredity. ' ' 



Although the theories of hereditary action 

 are thus somewhat diverse, certain general facts 

 may be noted upon which there is agreement. 

 Herbert Spencer defines heredity as the law 

 that each plant or animal, if it reproduces, gives 

 origin to others like itself, the likeness con- 

 sisting not so much in the repetition of indivi- 

 dual traits as in the assumption of the same 

 general structure. 



According to Galton*s law of ancestral in- 



