jo Heredity, Variation and Genius 



the agents. It is not possible to conceive the 

 number of subtilely interacting energies liberated 

 in the body during sexual orgasm, or to picture in 

 mind the variety and complexity of the figures 

 which the constituent atoms of the germinal union 

 take in the mazes of their complex motions — 

 intricate and intervolved, yet ever regular* — and 

 their consequent constitutional issues ; just as 

 impossible in fact as it is yet to detect the ex- 

 tremely fine physico-chemical change of nerve 

 element which underlies the dawn of love in the 

 maiden's heart or the resignation and solace 

 infused into the pious soul by prayer. Subtilizing 

 our conceptions of things, it is not unimagin- 

 able that like as the least false note of function is 

 something of a discord in the full harmony of the 

 bodily symphony, so the quality and the circum- 

 stances of the reproductive act dynamically affect 

 the tone and quality of the product.! 



* As Milton says of the planets 



Mazes intricate, 

 Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular 

 Then most when most irregular they seem. — 



Paradise Lost. 

 t I may quote here an interesting sentence from Milton's 

 Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, who, as I have shown on 

 former occasions, was a pronounced materialist — in the philoso- 

 phical sense of that abused term. " There is a hidden efficacy 

 of love and hatred in man as well as in other kinds, not moral 

 but natural, which though not always in the choice, yet in the 

 success of marriage will be most predominant." The italics are 

 mine. 



