THE EMBRYOLOGY OF THE SOUL. 145 



germ-plasm, is, in my opinion, an exaggeration. I 

 am convinced, on the contrary, that the great laws of 

 progressive heredity and of the correlative functional 

 adaptation apply to the soul as well as to the body. 

 The new characteristics which the individual has 

 acquired during life may react to some extent on the 

 molecular texture of the germ-plasm in the egg-cell 

 and sperm-cell, and may thus be transferred to the 

 next generation by heredity in certain conditions 

 (naturally, only in the form of latent energy). 



Although in the soul-blending at the moment of 

 conception only the latent forces of the two parent 

 souls are transmitted by the coalescence of the erotic 

 cell-nuclei, still it is possible that the hereditary 

 psychic influence of earlier, and sometimes very much 

 older, generations may be communicated at the same 

 time. For the laws of latent heredity or atavism 

 apply to the soul just as validly as to the anatomical 

 organisation. We find these remarkable phenomena 

 of reversion in a very simple and instructive form 

 in the alternation of generations of the polyps 

 and medusas. Here we see two very different 

 generations alternate so regularly that the first 

 resembles the third, fifth, and so on ; while the 

 second (very different from the preceding) is like the 

 fourth, sixth, etc. (Natural History of Creation). We 

 do not find such alternation of generations in man 

 and the higher animals and plants, in which, owing 

 to continuous heredity, each generation resembles the 

 next ; nevertheless, even in these cases we often meet 

 with phenomena of reversion, which must be reduced 

 to the same law of latent heredity. 



Eminent men often take more after their grand- 

 parents than their parents even in the finer shades of 



L 



