1 1 2 Shakspeare 



he was, they being what they were, and could 

 not have been otherwise. That it was not a poor 

 stock, but pregnant with native vigour, is proved 

 by the splendid fruit which it bore when, by a 

 happy conspiracy of circumstances, a slip of it 

 lighted on very favourable conditions of growth, 

 albeit after that supreme effort the exhausted 

 stock drooped and died. But such information, 

 even if we had it in fairly good shape, would at 

 best be but general ; it would not help us in the 

 least to understand the origin of the extraordinary 

 qualities as a man of genius possessed by him yet 

 not possessed by his brothers born and bred in 

 the same circumstances, nor by his children in the 

 next generation. To understand how such special 

 and unique endowments came about, it would be 

 necessary to find out many hidden things — to wit, 

 the various physiological impressions affecting 

 silently the informing processes of the particular 

 parental germs, and the subtilties and complexities 

 of their compositions in reproductive union, which 

 are yet quite unknown ; the many fine, yet most 

 subtile-potent impressions made by varying bodily 

 states and mental moods of the parents upon the 

 intense rapid and complex motions of the many 

 million constituent atoms of the combining germs 

 at the reproductive crisis ; and the subsequent 

 influences of the mother's moods of body and 

 mind upon the intra-uterine processes of em- 

 bryonic development. As long as these things 

 are mysteries, so long will speculations be futile 



