Heredity, Variation and Genius i>7 



germ of a well-born person debased and degraded 

 by bad training in unwholesome moral and 

 physical surroundings suffers not in the least 

 from the acquired mental and physical degenera- 

 tion. The immortal stream of life-plasm thus 

 flowing down through a succession of individual 

 conduits, neither purified nor polluted in its 

 passage, it is perhaps a little sad to think that in 

 the painfully perfecting process of humanization 

 through the ages the seed of the righteous profits 

 nothing by his father's righteousness, as it is 

 certainly strange to think that the germ-plasm 

 is the one bodily secretion which is nowise used 

 and renewed in the economy of the organic 

 commonwealth. More agreeable might it be to 

 the notion of a silent and continuous evolution 

 of things to imagine that every year's or even 

 every day's plasm witnesses to the individual 

 character of the time and circumstances. Withal 

 the conviction might instil a sterner sense of 

 responsibility throughout the season of procrea- 

 tive activity did Nature allow the least considera- 

 tion of consequences ever then to enter the 

 procreator's mind. 



Looking far enough back into the origins and 

 deep enough into the processes of organic evolu- 

 tion, it may someday be perceived and acknow- 

 ledged that reason itself, which is the discharged 

 function of man's superior brain, is nothing else 

 but the incorporation in his complex cerebral 

 organization of the cumulative adaptations to the 



