33 



It is impossible to enter fully into this subject now, but I 

 should do wrong if I omitted to mention Darwin's attempt to 

 explain these facts by means of his marvellous theory of Pangenesis, 

 a theory that implies an extent of storage in germs and in other 

 parts such as one might regard as incredible if it had not been 

 gravely propounded by such a man. Darwin regards each cell of 

 a living being as to a certain extent independent or autonomous ; 

 each such cell then has the power of casting off a " free gemmule" 

 which is capable of reproducing a similar cell. " As each unit or 

 group of similar units throughout the body casts off its gemmules, 

 and as all are contained within the smallest seed or egg, and 

 within each spermatozoon, or pollen grain, their number and 

 minuteness must be something inconceivable. All organic beings, 

 moreover, include many dormant gemmules, derived from their 

 grandparents and more remote progenitors, but not from all their 

 progenitors. These almost infinitely numerous and minute 

 gemmules must be included in each bud, ovule, spermatozoon, and 

 pollen grain." "Truly," as Wendell Holmes says, " this body in 

 which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not 

 a private carriage but an omnibus." An omnibus indeed ! But 

 Darwin thought that this is no reason for rejecting his hypothesis, 

 and he believed it affords an explanation of many of the curious 

 phenomena of reproduction which I have indicated above. I shall 

 not venture to pronounce judgment in such a cause. 



We have now left the sure ground of fact and have entered 

 upon the region of pure conjecture ; but I cannot resist the 

 temptation to recall to your minds a singular supposed instance of 

 storage of mind force, given in M. Renan's complacent account of 

 himself when he speaks of enjoying " the economies of thought, of 

 long obscure lines of peasants and seamen " — as he says, *' A race 

 produces its flower when it emerges from obscurity. Brilliant 

 intellectual births come out of a vast abyss of unconsciousness, I 

 would say out of vast reservoirs of ignorance," and again, " Genius, 

 which is always the result of a long previous slumber." 



I must leave you to say whether the long list of instances of 

 storage of power that I have now laid before you, in any way 

 justifies M. Renan's notion that he was in a certain sense an " heir 

 of the ages " past. I do not myself think they do, for, as we have 

 seen, the exercise of a talent or of a power increases the storage for 

 future work ; and if we were to adopt Darwin's hypothesis, we 

 should have to acknowledge that brain gemmules can only be 

 thrown off from pre-existent similar material, and hence it is much 

 less likely that the dull wits of an ignorant race should produce a 

 clever man, than that as Galton has shown, genius should be 

 hereditary. 



Lastly, in this regard, I should like to mention a striking theory 

 of the great French pathologist. Dr. Metschnikoff, as to the cause of 

 natural death " in both plants and animals. 



He believes that the reason why we die, that our days are but 

 as " a handbreadth " and that a man's beauty consumes away with 



