46 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



mechanical life which is only just alive that which 

 may be natural in the quick, active, adaptive life 

 which is much alive ? * On the whole it is 

 somewhat strange to think that productive activity 

 within the body can be severed entirely from 

 reproductive activity by the body ; more natural, 

 if not necessary, to think that the forming germ 

 is somehow susceptible to its modified bodily 

 environment, exhibiting the effects in variations 

 which, informed by the parental constitution as it 

 then actually is, witness to parental acquisitions 

 of structure. 



The opinion that an elementary particle of a 

 bodily unity specialized for reproductive purposes 

 lives in physiological seclusion is directly contrary 

 to the whole trend of scientific enquiry, which 

 goes to show that when one organ suffers or joys 

 all the organs suffer or joy more or less with it, 

 being members of one body and members one of 

 another ; and that inevitably because of the inti- 

 mate physical association, nervous and circula- 

 tory, and of the co-operation to one vital end of 

 the several very complex and subtile chemical pro- 



* Although life is habitually thought and spoken of in the 

 abstract as a constant entity, the word sufficing without 

 thought of its signification, in the concrete it is really of 

 very diverse quality and value, ranging in dignity con- 

 tinuously from physico-chemical to psychical activity. The 

 epidermic cell is not on the same life-level with the cerebral 

 cell, any more than the Protococcus with a Prime Minister or 

 the Amaba with an Archbishop. 



