596 The American Naturalist. [July, 
among human beings or it would not survive in the child. 
Next to the impression made upon cells by their environment, 
producing the most profound and extraordinary changes of 
structure and functions, nothing can be more strange than the 
persistent heredity or atavism in cells. We can find a paral- 
lel for these two opposing forces in the centrifugal and centri- 
petal forces which keep the planets in their orbits. What 
millions of ages must have elapsed since the ancestors of man 
diverged from the primeval worm-like hermaphrodite form! 
Yet not only do numerous organs survive in a more or less 
rudimentary condition, pointing conclusively to this origin, 
but there is every now and then a strange relapse to the her- 
maphrodite condition. The branchial arches found in every 
mammal with loops of blood-vessels running up to them point 
to an ancestry less remote, yet for all that, almost unimagin- 
ably far away in the past. The pineal gland deep hidden 
under the immensely developed brain of man, still tells of a 
third eye which could once look through an opening in the 
skull. Anda small bone of the wrist, of no imaginable use to 
any mammal at present, may be a survival of an amphibian 
ancestor's sixth finger. So we may well believe that the faculty 
of fresh word-making which is being killed out in our children 
by the use of language ready-made in all around them is 
capable of a sudden revival. No doubt many of my readers a 
will recall from their own experience the power of coining 
fresh words possessed by their children and the curious redu- 
plication of syllables employed by them. We may conclude 
that if miocene man did not coin fresh words for himself and 
insist upon employing them as he chose, he was incapable of 
doing what his young descendant can do every day. 
With regard to the theory that abstract terms were the first 
words used we have not only the objection that all abstract terms 
used by us can be traced back to material objects and actions; 
and the objection that no one could have understood ready- 
made abstract terms without a miracle ; but the still stronger 
argument that numberless savage and semi-savage peoples 
cannot understand and do not use abstract terms to this day. 
Even so simple an abstract idea as “tail” or “ tree” is beyond ee, 
