1 6 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



anyhow is that if the ecstasy be an incomplete 

 dissolution of personality by partial absorption 

 into the infinite it must be surely prophetic of a 

 complete dissolution by an entire absorption at 

 individual death. 



Thus much for speculative disquisition to which, 

 if it provoke the natural enquiry what it has to 

 do with organic variation, the answer may be 

 made that the inspired person of any sort is, after 

 all, a supreme instance of organic variation. 



II. 



Forasmuch as organic variations from the same 

 stock in the same circumstances differ, being 

 weak or strong, stable or unstable, well- or ill- 

 qualified to profit by presenting opportunities, the 

 full outcome is not the product of suitable en- 

 vironment only but implies intrinsic quality and 

 energy, something in the prosperous variation not 

 passively suiting the circumstances only but 

 prompt to react to and take advantage of them. 

 Responding probably in the first instance to some 

 obscure stimulus in the environment, it is itself 

 endowed with an innate impulse to become and 

 be ; as vital outcome of the organic unity from 

 which it proceeds it embodies an intrinsic unity 

 straining after a specific realization of self. There- 

 fore it is that in the reciprocal interaction between 

 it and the environment it is not just the passive 



