IN THE REALM OF MIND. 327 



purely mental. How often do we recognise the 

 tone, character, and the very turn of thought of 

 dead friends, in the conversation and conduct of 

 their children ! The innate tendency to look at 

 things in the same point of view, is evidenced in 

 the reproduction of the same mental combina- 

 tions, of the same images, of the same opinions, in 

 short, of the same ideas. Cases, more remarkable 

 than others of this kind, attract our attention, and 

 we at once recognise ideas as innate which are so 

 obviously determined by the forces of hereditary 

 transmission. But we forget how often these laws 

 of inheritance must be working invisibly where 

 they never break ground upon the surface. And 

 thus it is brought home to us how the Mind may 

 be subject to laws of which it is unconscious — how 

 its whole habit of thought, and the aspect in 

 which different questions present themselves to 

 its apprehension, are in a great measure deter- 

 mined by the mysterious forces of congenital con- 

 stitution. And what is true in one measure of the 

 individual mind, is true, also, in other measures, of 

 whole families and of races of Men. 



But the laws of Material Organisation are not the 



