J 2 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



idea of the subtilized nerve-force styled mental 

 being other and more than any yet familiar and 

 tangible physical force, albeit in real continuity 

 of being. It will contain in itself and witness to 

 the environing mental influences or forces which, 

 having been incorporated organically into the 

 structure of the supreme cerebral organization, 

 are thereafter discharged as its functions : a kind 

 and mode of energy, in fact, so different from that 

 which is yet objectively known and handled that 

 by comparison it may be called etherial or 

 spiritual. 



The simple truth, so easy to say so hard to 

 realize, is that man is a product and part of 

 Nature and lives in, for and by it. As every cell 

 of the body is a living part of it and cannot live 

 separate from it, constantly acted on and reacting 

 in the economy, so the individual mortal is part 

 of the physical and social medium, acted on and 

 reacting continually, lives only by virtue of it, 

 cannot live separate from it. When he can no 

 longer act and react it quietly sheds him and, 

 eaflike, he falls and rots. Imbued with his keen 

 sense of individuality and the pride of his pre- 

 eminence in animate Nature, he is prone purblindly 

 to overlook or wilfully to ignore the fact of his 

 absolute dependence on the environing medium, 

 albeit his religious instinct has always borne deep, 

 though vague and varying, testimony to it under 

 its different forms, symbols, myths, fables, cere- 

 monies and creeds. 



