34 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



acquired chai-acters goes the theory that the 

 germ-plasm is immortal ; that there is a continu- 

 ance of actual substance from generation to gene- 

 ration, an ever so minute part of the specific 

 plasm contained in the parent's egg-cell — in the 

 nucleoplasm of it — not being used up in the 

 building of the offspring's body, as the rest of the 

 plasm is, but sacredly reserved in a kind of holy 

 of holies for the formation of the germ cells of the 

 following generation to which it is substantially 

 passed on. The body or soma only is it which is 

 mortal ; the precious bit of sequestered germ, 

 plasm is immortal, passing through a succession 

 of individual conduits — through priests and pro- 

 phets, sinners and saints, idiots and immortals — 

 whose several modifications of characters during 

 their lives nowise modify it. The welldoer is the 

 unsympathetic host of a bad germ, the evildoer is 

 redeemed by his hospitality to the good germ. 

 Necessarily the sacred plasm dies with the indi- 

 vidual body when that dies, but the death is then 

 an accident not a natural death ; the natural 

 death of the soma causing the accidental death of 

 the germ. When Judas Iscariot hanged himself — 

 if he did hang himself, which is problematical, 

 seeing that one evangelist only deems so tragic an 

 event worth mention — it was the adverse fate of 

 the plasm which he might otherwise have trans- 

 mitted untainted by his sinful nature. 



The two theories — this of a supremely fine sub- 

 stance of quasi-spiritual and immortal essence, 



