yS Heredity, Variation and Ge7iius 



they could, gladly increase and multiply to fill 

 not the whole earth only but every other planet 

 with their kind, deeming the result a great and 

 goodly gain to the universe. 



It is because they are urged by an organic 

 impulse deeper and more powerful than conscious 

 motive that they are borne onwards in the mighty 

 stream of being, and supplied with an unfailing fund 

 of optimism which heartens them everywhere to go 

 on being and becoming, and mercifully to ignore 

 what they are and have been in the concrete. 

 Nature, intent upon the continuance of the species, 

 deals with the individual mortal much as it does 

 with the procreating creature which is then insen- 

 sible to mutilations, benumbing him to all but that 

 which he immediately craves by so transporting 

 and dissociating a particular tract or area — ecstati- 

 cally dislocating it, so to speak — as to break its 

 connections with all currents of thought, disagree- 

 ing, qualifying or inhibitory, from the surrounding 

 cerebral areas. No wonder then that love has been 

 deemed a divine kind of madness. How can there 

 be reflection when a physical interruption of the 

 normal paths of association renders impossible a 

 reflection of the activity of the dismembered tract 

 on to its related parts of the mental confederation ? 

 So it comes to pass that falling in love against the 

 counsels of the head through faith in the deeper 

 counsels of the heart, man is insistent to people 

 "this sinful world" from u the miseries" of which 

 he gives " hearty thanks " when a brother or a 



