The True Ego 371 



the immortal substance which the rest of the structure is ap- 

 pointed to serve, sets off in due course a portion of itself to 

 be the next master of a new body. It is very noteworthy 

 that the setting off of a new germ-cell for the next genera- 

 tion, is done in some cases by the master-plasm in the em- 

 bryo, long before that embryonic development is complete. 

 This is a necessary consequence of the recapitulation of the 

 race history. The unfolding heredity of the master-plasm at 

 some time reaches that idant which was formed when the 

 race ancestor first set off a special germ-cell, that is to say 

 when instead of budding or dividing at places not specialized, 

 it developed the germ-function in one specially suitable part 

 of its substance. Now the human germ at the corresponding 

 period; when it is an embryo of this same primitive type, 

 sets off a germ-branch for the new body, and it begins to 

 differentiate the special organs needed to preserve it, when 

 the main structure is not one quarter complete. The lesson 

 of this is that the germ is not made by the structural body, 

 as was long supposed, but the structure is made by, and for, 

 the germ. The germ-plasm (human or of any other species) 

 is not a substance prepared by a body so that the body may 

 repeat itself, but the germ is a strand of the life-plasm, the 

 ego, making a new body for itself. It precedes and pro- 

 duces that body at its primitive beginning, and when the 

 body is born, the new germ lies in the receptacle of its own 

 making, continuing its own immortal destiny. 



Even before birth of the new infant body, the future germ 

 within it is being endowed with heredity as the body is com- 

 pleted. In the human species the body is well-nigh com- 

 pleted within the parent, so that the end of the first great 



