Heredity, Variation and Genius 45 



for the maintenance of a passing organism which 

 has its brief day and dies, but ejected outwardly 

 for the maintenance of a continuing species which 

 has its long day ere it dies. For when all is said 

 nutrition is much like a continual reproduction 

 and reproduction an excess of nutrition. 



In estimating the possible working of the body 

 upon its reproductive germ, it is necessary to 

 understand and bear well in mind that the ques- 

 tion is not of the set action of an unchanging 

 bodily fabric ; it is a question of the whole bodily 

 functions in process of continual flux as they are 

 modified by exercise and growth to habits of 

 exercise and of their subsequent reactions on the 

 constituent elements. The body is not a fixed 

 but a modifiable fabric, function developing struc- 

 ture ; and this more particularly in the evolution 

 of the nervous organization and the faculties, 

 bodily and mental, served by it in the individual 

 life of relation during its periods of productive 

 activity. Habits of function incorporate in struc- 

 ture are thereafter expended as function, and 

 every process of function involves internal effects, 

 physical and chemical, of subtile and wide-reach- 

 ing vital consequence. While there may be no 

 evident transmission of acquired characters by 

 old and formed structures of the organism (sup- 

 posing such to be acquired) the transmission 

 might still conceivably take place in young plastic 

 and forming parts capable of easy elemental 

 reproduction. How expect in the dull, slow, 



