Heredity, Variation and Genius 3 



until the species consists of those having it, those 

 not so gifted by grace having died out for want of 

 it ; that means that from the interesting hour when 

 the union of the two primary germs of ape-man 

 and ape-woman issued in the first variation lead- 

 ing to the development of the human species, 

 thenceforth onwards through numbers numberless 

 of years, no individual constitutional modification 

 has had the least direct effect upon the character 

 of the progeny. The acquisitions of human evolu- 

 tion through the ages, all the differences between 

 Pithecanthropus erectus and man at his highest 

 estate, have been wholly and solely due either to 

 so-called spontaneous variations, or to variations 

 caused by unions of parental germs and the 

 sequent developments of such progressive varia- 

 tions by natural selection.* Now certainly, what- 

 ever may have been the case once, there is in the 

 substance of the germ-plasm with its many pos- 

 sible combinations of many million constituent 

 atoms and their memories of past structural dis- 

 positions conceivable room for any number of 

 combinations determined by intrinsic affinities or 

 extrinsic impulses. 



Along with the theory of non-inheritance of 



* Anatomists have been much exercised in lively disputes 

 whether Pithecanthropus erectus, the fossil bones of which were 

 discovered in Java in 1894, is to be considered human or anthro- 

 poid. What is certain is that Pithecanthropus is more apelike 

 than any known human type, more manlike than any known 

 form of ape. 



