Heredity, Variation and Genius 69 



so entirely divided as they seem, since there is 

 some man in every woman and some woman in 

 every man, and sometimes a great deal of the 

 one in the other ; and obviously — res ipsa loquitur 

 — a particular ancestral male quality is transmitted 

 safely to offspring through the female in whom it 

 cannot appear openly, as a particular female 

 quality is transmitted through the male in whom 

 the quality lurks latent. 



After all, the transporting fusing of the love- 

 passion, like some other transports, may be in- 

 terpreted as a transient union with the primal 

 energy of Nature, an intoxication or becoming 

 one with the infinite, such as the enraptured 

 poet or musician feels, and by which the reli- 

 gious ecstatic is divinely transported. Ecstasies 

 of love, music, poetry and religion are without 

 doubt subtilely physical and not separated from 

 one another by discontinuity of being ; they hark 

 back to something more true and deep than that 

 which they are able formally to express ; and 

 to think of one as more objective and physical 

 and of another as quite subjective and mental, 

 is just a bad consequence of the absurd duality 

 of being so long mischievously made between 

 mind and body. That being so, it is easy to 

 suppose that differences of mood and circum- 

 stances at the reproductive juncture may affect 

 the tone and quality of the germinal compound, 

 reflecting in some mysterious way the rhythm 

 of subtile interfusing moods and motions of 



