52 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



of parents, not accidental but constitutional, might 

 well affect the tone of the fluctuating germ-plasm, 

 even if they did not become distinct tendencies or 

 inclinations ; for in germs as in mortals tones and 

 qualities of substance lie deeper than formal ex- 

 pressions in thoughts and actions. 



What are thoughts -and actions fundamentally 

 but the outcome of minute explosions of complex 

 unstable colloids — sparks, so to speak, of quasi- 

 electric energy ? It is feeling which, bespeaking 

 the essential composition or quality of the ex- 

 ploding element, represents the silent continuous 

 energy. Forasmuch then as the organism is not 

 a material fabric only but a living unison to which 

 every constituent part contributes its note, the 

 most complex and admirable harmony in the wide 

 world, albeit a harmony like that of the spheres 

 inaudible by mortal ears, it certainly may be well 

 or ill tuned by precedent ancestral influence. 

 Twice fortunate is it when the fabric is well 

 fashioned as well as well tuned throughout, seeing 



ceive the cell as a complexity of intensely active forces, and 

 thereupon further think of all the surrounding matter after the 

 same manner, it will be easier to picture in mind the possible 

 action of such radiating energies. Or if, still thinking fan- 

 cifully, we conceive the cells in terms of sound instead of 

 sight or touch, picturing its activities as a musical concord, it 

 may not be difficult to imagine its harmonious or discordant 

 effects upon the whole bodily unison. Or if we accept the 

 theory of the disintegration of atoms with the accompanying 

 liberation of intra-atomic energies, what limit is imaginable to 

 the subtilty, swiftness and extent of their action? 



