515.1 (NA44- %x\xxkx^ af the I33?f /m HEREDITY, VARIATION AND GENIUS WITH ESSAY ON SHAKSPEARE : "TESTIMONIED IN HIS OWN BRINGINGSFORTH " AND ADDRESS ON MEDICINE: PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE BY HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D. ILonfcon JOHN BALE, SONS & DANIELSSON, Ltd. OXFORD HOUSE 83-91, GREAT TITCHFIELD STREET, OXFORD ST., W. 1908 HEREDITY, VARIATION AND GENIUS. i. Everybody is what he typically is because his progenitors were what they were, like having begotten its like ; he inherits the form, traits and qualities of the stock from which he proceeds. In the molecular structure of the minute germ of him, with its millions of constituent atoms and their ordered mazes of intricate motions, lurked the predispositions or plans of his essential struc- ture, form and qualities : in that little book were all his members written when as yet there were none of them. That is an opinion which, based on the experience of all the world, emerges plainly in such popular sayings as that he comes of a good stock, that eagles do not breed doves, that one cannot gather grapes off thorns or figs off thistles, that what is bred in the bone will out in the flesh, and in the old Hebrew proverb — not quite baseless perhaps although savagely denounced by Isaiah — that when the fathers have eaten sour grapes the children's teeth are set on edge ; wherein lies truly not the broad statement of a general law of heredity only but also a just appre- i n r\ 2 Heredity, Variation and Genius hension of the predominant part which the quality of the stock plays in the transmission of qualities and the foundation of character. Always a basic fault in the stock is liable or likely to appear in one or another offspring of parents who them- selves have shown no sign of it ; the bad streak, Alphaeus-like, having gone under for a while to come again to the surface in the stream of descent. No one, be his aims and ambitions, his regrets and resolves, his triumphs and mis- haps what they may, evades the fate of his organ- ization. Happy he then who, looking back on a sound ancestry, can rest in the quiet confidence of a good descent ; in all changes and chances of life it shall stand him in good stead. Besides the manifest inheritance of physical and mental features of both parents either in the same forms or in various blends and proportions offspring exhibit features not visible in either of them, not even it may be in their known ancestry. Every one has his idiosyncrasy, being essentially himself, not another self, notwithstanding the multitude of selves that are and are likely to be. Diversities do not at first sight seem so natural and necessary as it does for a child to resemble its father or mother. Whence comes the invention which the new feature is ? Somehpw from the union of the special qualities of two stocks com- positions of germinal elements issuing in organic variations have taken effect. But is that strange at all ? Compositions in organic natures are Heredity, Variation and Genius -■> more than mere mixtures of matters. As chemical bodies unite to form compounds having properties unlike those of either component, it is not sur- prising that the vital union of the infinitely com- plex and numerous constituents of the germinal plasm, containing essentially the qualities of two individuals and their respective stocks — reaching back indeed to the very beginnings of life — should originate variations.* It would be more strange if it were not so. Considering the innumerable varieties of personal features which men and women present, no two faces nor two voices nor two gaits being exactly alike, and reflecting that what is displayed outwardly must, so to speak, have been contained essentially in the innermost of the minute germ, the visible bespeaking that which is invisible, it is plain that there are innate * The period during which organic life has been evolving on this planet is differently estimated. Most experts agree that it was from 100 to 200 million years, while some assign more than double that time. A German scientist, taking the lowest computation, has in imagination reduced the 100 million years to a day, assigning the proper proportion of hours and minutes to the successive geological periods. According to that estimate the human period would be two minutes, and if the historic period be estimated at 6,000 years it would be five seconds of the imagined day and the Christian period in that case two seconds. All too brief a period, plead Christian apologists, to fulfil its destined function of regenerating mankind, when account is taken of the many million years during which count- less millions of the race died unregenerate, unwitting of the transcendent event of its future redemption and powerless to profit by it. 4 Heredity, Variation and Genius germinal differences, predispositions of elements fitted to grow into definite structural characters, and that unlike bodily and mental qualities are as much in the natural order of things as likenesses. And if innate germinal differences, then active elective affinities working in the particular germ- unions as in the particular parental germ-breeders when they fell furiously and fatuously in love — sexual attractions or selections of elements in germs as of mortals in social life. That variations continually occur in organic combinations and developments is a familiar fact. Sprouting prodigally they mostly perish soon be- cause they are not then put forth in circum- stances favourable to their growth ; those only thrive and grow which lighting on propitious surroundings meet with conditions suiting them and they suit — that is to say, by what is called natural selection. In such case it is a survival of that which is most fitted to survive in the cir- cumstances, although nowise always a survival of the highest and best, seeing that the circumstances may suit the worst and starve the best. Pliant sycophancy prospers well where manly self-respect would die of inanition, and the apt lie often spreads quickly in civilized communities by natural selection or easy infection when the naked truth, be- ing conventionally indecent, obtains no sustenance and is promptly stifled. Why variations occur so constantly in organic development is not yet ex- plained, unless it be thought explanation enough Heredity, Variation and Genius 5 to ascribe it to the inherent impulse of proto- plasm under suitable stimulation to increase and divide when it can and as adaptively as it can. Scientific enquiry has to concern itself for the present with the what is without knowing the why. As in the end it must perforce do with the ultimate why of things ; for when science has reached its utmost stretch it will not be omni- science, each height of painfully scaled outlook disclosing height towering above height without end. It is the foolish body only, not considering wiselv, who aspires to " pierce the veil of the unknown " ; the lifting of one veil evermore dis- covers another veil and will surely do so to the ending of mortality. All the laboured learnings of mankind being but modes of self-expression in response to pro- gressive adaptations of experience, the symbolical notations of the classified experiences of limited beings who begin and end, and whose ultimate value consists not in thinking but in being — symbols too made exclusively in terms of the lead- ing senses of sight and touch and of the mus- cular sense — it is evident that knowledge of the whence and whither of things cannot be obtained by any rational method of enquiry ; not less evident that such revelation by any other method may be just the irrational illusion of human conceit exulting in and interpreting grandly its own creative exercise.* But not therefore un- * There is notably a singular pleasure in creative or produc- tive work, mental as well as bodily, a sort of transporting 6 Heredity, Variation and Genius profitable illusion during its season of growth and vigour. When mankind cease to create seasonable illusions and to take illusions for realities it may go hard with them in their pilgrimage through time : to them as to the in- dividual mortal when desire fails and hope dies the grasshopper be a burden. Certain it is that there is in organic nature a strain or nisus to a more complex and special be- coming of things, a conatus fiendi or progrediendi, which has wrought steadily through the ages and discovers its working alike in the innumerable variational outbursts ; in the countless multitudes of seeds, buds and germs that mostly perish time- lessly ; in the now settled types of the various organic species ; in the eager aspirations of human imagination, futile or fruitful. It is as if the mighty stream of organic plasm as it flows slowly onwards in its countless channels from age to age were intent to make new channels on the least occasion and only seldom succeeded. That it seldom succeeds now may be because its upward creative emotion : the accomplished liar feels it in launching his lies ; the fantastic novelist in the silly and grotesque de- formities of an undisciplined imagination ; the soaring meta- physician in the ventosities which he proudly christens entities ; the poet or humbler author who in the zest and fervour of composition is immensely delighted with work which, if he dares to read it over twenty years afterwards looks common- place, perhaps makes his ears tingle or his cheeks glow — that is to say, if he has had the capacity to grow in insight and judg- ment as he has grown in years and detachment. Heredity, Variation and Genius 7 flux is pretty well restricted to the human line of progress, man's dominant ascendency having made a hostile environment which has stopped natural progress in the lower animals, although not per- haps in all the minutest forms of microbal life which still fight him not unsuccessfully and may conceivably one day be victorious. How can variational shoots of parent stems, such as once grew into different species of living things, take effect now in face of a man-made environment, uniformly adverse, which checks variation and prevents differentiating adaptation ? In the animal kingdom it has come practically to this — that the lower animals are reduced to the self- conservative instinct ; in man only does the per- fective instinct work. He is, so to speak, the supreme branch of the tree of life in which the ascending sap yet stirs active growth, the present and perhaps final culmination of organic develop- ment on his planet ; which in truth may well be the case, seeing how successfully he has absorbed and exploited all lower organic being and what small likelihood there is of the advent of higher being to absorb and exploit him. Asking whence this force of organic evolution is derived, the answer is simple enough if the enquirer be content to stay in secondary causes. It is plainly due to the innumerable minute and perpetually beating pulses of the sun's rays upon living protoplasm from its earliest and simplest up to its latest and most complex development ; 8 Heredity, Variation and Genius the capital stored in weaker life being seized and consumed by stronger life in progressive carnifica- tions to subserve its maintenance and growth. So and not otherwise has organic composition been urged to higher and higher evolution of life through the ages ; its series of ascents mark- ing progressive embodiments of the sun's radiant energies — its light, its heat, its showers of electrons — in more complex matter and force. Were the sun — " of this great world both eye and soul " — to go out to-night all life would be dead tomorrow, no memory more left of flora and fauna, of king- doms and empires, of wise men and fools on its sunless satellite. A verily tragic ending of things to behold were any one left to behold it, but not after all really unbefitting the trifles it and its products are in everlastingness. But if very finite and relative creatures, themselves infinitesimally minute fractions of an infinite universe, strain their wits to know the primal origin of things, perforce imagining beginnings and ends just because they begin and end, and ask meaningless questions about the absolute when they are only relative, the infinite when they are only finite, and the eternal when they are only transitory ; vainly craving to comprehend the incomprehensible and to express the ineffable by setting forth how things not finite began, why they go on, and whither they are going ; then there is nothing for it but transcendental metaphysical inanities or ecstatic outpours and reverential pantings forth of mystical Heredity, Variation and Genius 9 thoughts and feelings : these enrapturing because intensely thrilled with the transport of a vague and vast emotion which may be gloriously inter- preted as a transient union or communion with the primal and divine energy from which all things proceed ; those sublimely exalting because tired with the special conceit of a superior faculty of insight into the realities of being which the common mind is destitute of. Is it true then that there lurks deep in human nature — in the heart rather than in the head — a slumbering instinct of cosmic unity, or, failing that, of organic unity ? A reluctance of human pride to share such humbler organic being may be pacified by representing the matter as a shar- ing in the divinity of nature, inborn love of which omnipresent divinity can then be triumphantly proclaimed to mark the opening of a faculty of insight transcending intellect. If the ultimate inspiration of art, poetry, music, love, religion, so transporting at its best as to be styled divine, be an awakened feeling of a mingling with the universe, a thrill of the infinite not ever to be expressed adequately in terms of the understand- ing, such inspiration must necessarily be aspiration rather than apprehension, exclamation or cry rather than articulate language, prayer rather than predication. The man lauds, as the bee buzzes and the grasshopper chirps, the divine ; either of which no doubt pictures it, if it picture it at all, in suitable forms of bee-thought or grass- \o Heredity, Variation and Genius hopper-thought. Every form of perception or knowledge being sense-derived and sense-condi- tioned limitation of ultimate reality, which might conceivably be pictured otherwise than in terms of the senses of sight and touch, it is certainly safer, in hope of getting nearer to the ultimate reality of things, to rest on feeling which cannot be formulated. While understanding or reason represents the successive and increasing adapta- tions to the environment, with careful maintenance of just balance of relations, which the individual offshoot of nature painfully makes in its process of adaptation, feeling can be thus claimed to represent its fundamental root in and union with the nature it issues from and always remains part of ; so that where elemental instincts come into play the domain of intellect can be prescribed to end and the domain of religion to begin. Neces- sarily a somewhat vague and vacuous region — a spacious feeling of an infinite within as of an infinite without — but for that reason all the more delectable ; for mystical feeling is a pleasing suf- fusion necessitating no painstaking and tedious labours of acquisition nor scrupulous regard of proportion, and fancy may proudly people with such forms as it pleases.* * And yet of the actual value of such vague feeling might it not truly perhaps be said as of the value of vain and wander- ing metaphysical thoughts ? " But apt the mind or fancy is to rove " Unchecked ; and of her roving is no end, Heredity, Variation and Genius 1 1 It might be curious to enquire exactly what is the real value of the ecstasy of feeling by which the mortal, strangely transported out of himself, imagines he is translated into divine communion. Is it an actual mingling of his being with the primal energy of things ? Ecstasies of love and religion and the like are real conditions of mind which plainly ought to be taken account of by a positive science apt to ignore or despise them. Physically they no doubt mark an exaltation of the nervous system by which feeling is raptur- ously inflated, thought diffused into vague and spacious feeling, and the outer, world dislimned into almost shadowy unreality : the customary organized forms of adaptations to the environ- ment dissolved for the time and the self ex- panded into a sort of formless being. Is the rapture then really an entrance into a higher sphere of transcendent being ? Or is it, like the extraordinary rapture of feeling and wonderful illumination of an occasional dream when, their proper paths of association suspended, the waves of flickering ideas usually scatter to meet at " Till warned or by experience taught, she learn " That not to know at large things remote "From use, obscure and subtle, but to know " That which before us lies in daily life " Is the prime wisdom ; what is more is fume, " Or emptiness or fond impertinence, " And renders us in things that most concern " Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek. Paradise Lost, B. VIII. 190. 1 2 Heredity, Variation and Genius random, really an illusive joy and knowledge which is seen to be of no value, perhaps to be absurd nonsense, on being brought to the test of waking reason ? Or may the dream-illumina- tion itself perchance be, as once reckoned, the divinely vouchsafed vision of a superior spiritual insight ?* A notable fact is that the transport of being is a condition of things which can be more or less actively excited in a suitable temperament by such material means as alcohol, opium, and in an infinitely expansive manner sometimes by the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas. One reason in- deed why mankind show themselves inveterately prone to the use of alcohol or opium or like- acting drugs all the world over is that these substances exalt the self to a sense of power and feeling of beatitude, delivering it from the bonds and pains of the actual environment, and thus translate the finite real of adaptation into the unlimited ideal of desire. Pathological the ex- travagant exaltation certainly sometimes is : no- where is exultant optimism and inflamed sense of happiness more marked than in the extra- ordinary elation of feeling and self - confident audacity of sanguine thought and enterprize— * "And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams Call to the soul when man doth sleep, So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, And into glory peep." Henry Vaughan. Heredity, Variation and Genius 13 monstrously irrational except by occasional chance — which notoriously herald the invasion and accompany the progress of general paralysis of the insane ; a condition of advancing cerebral degeneration in which notwithstanding a persis- tent exaltation of feeling, owing probably to a toxic product of the degeneration, the nerve- paths of normal intellectual associations are by degrees visibly damaged and finally destroyed. Are we then to think that the ecstatic expansion of self into a sort of luminous tenuity of feeling or melting into space with simultaneous contrac- tion of the outer world signifies an actual trans- lation into a higher life ? A consideration not irrelevant is that a quite opposite feeling of deepest dejection and desolate misery with ap- palling loss of sense of realities — a vast, vague, ineffable woe — notably overwhelms the victim of profound melancholia and was once thought to denote actual possession by the devil : notoriously on that memorable occasion when the devil, driven out of the demoniac, entered the Gadarene swine and drove them headlong down a steep place into the sea. Evidently the state of exaltation is much the same whether it is stimulated by chemical agents from without, such as alcohol and opium, or is produced by some subtile toxin generated within the body, as seems to be the case in general paralysis, or is induced by the appropriate mental excitement and exclusive exercise of a particular 14 Heredity, Variation and Genius cerebral tract of thought and feeling, as in the religious ecstatic. Has it then more spiritual value in the one case than in the other ? Can the mortal by fit use of wine become temporarily divine ? Strange it would be to think that a suitable drug can thus be the chemical means of opening and making straight a path to the infinite. And yet the drug and the nervous molecule on which it acts are equally divine ; they reveal their kinship by their affinities ; and their joyful elective intercourse when they em- brace betokens a note of harmonious unity in the vast and mysterious complexity of things. However that be, putting aside the futile con- sideration of the primary cause and first principle of things, which is the eternally reiterated ab- surdity of human vanity, and confining attention to secondary causes, it is certain that the ecstatic transport of being marks a diffusive stimulation of the individual organic life and an accompany- ing dissolution of the cerebral life of relation with the external world. So far there may be said to be a sort of approximation to, if not mingling with or melting into, universal being ; for the organic life is nearer in nature to and in more intimate sympathy with the organic life of nature, on which it depends for the matter and force necessary to maintain its being and serve its functions, and with which in the rapturous outbursts of spring it shows so intimate and remarkable a sympathy. Never does nature seem so divine to its creatures as then. Heredity, Variation and Genius 15 In the ecstasies of love and religion — and the religious trance of the ecstatic saint is manifestly often a thrilling sublimation or spiritualization of the physiological love-passion — the transport is apt to be vast and indefinite, intellectual forms being swamped and personality dissolved into undefined feeling ; but in the more sober tran- sports of the great musical composer, of the en- raptured poet, of the truly inspired artist of every sort, the inspiration is continent and creative, irrigating rather than overflooding, being founded on and conditioned by a solid basis of previous intellectual acquirements which it animates and impels to fit organic synthesis. So the great work of art exhibits concentrated power in fine form of beauty ; the aim and effect of it being not pleasure only, as often alleged, but also the power manifest in the pleasure. It is otherwise with the sundry and diverse superstructures of myths, fables and dogmas which religious J superstition has built upon the rapture of feeling I at different times and places ; they had no such rational warrant in reality ; were plainly the fanciful and oftentimes grossly irrational notions pertaining to the particular intellectual develop- ment of the time and place. Behind or beneath which myths, dogmas and other forms, fit or false, of expression, inspiring and sustaining them, there was, nevertheless, the sort of transcendental feeling that was abiding however much and often its vesture was changed. An interesting reflection 1 6 Heredity, Variation and Genius anyhow is that if the ecstasy be an incomplete dissolution of personality by partial absorption into the infinite it must be surely prophetic of a complete dissolution by an entire absorption at individual death. Thus much for speculative disquisition to which, if it provoke the natural enquiry what it has to do with organic variation, the answer may be made that the inspired person of any sort is, after all, a supreme instance of organic variation. II. Forasmuch as organic variations from the same stock in the same circumstances differ, being weak or strong, stable or unstable, well- or ill- qualified to profit by presenting opportunities, the full outcome is not the product of suitable en- vironment only but implies intrinsic quality and energy, something in the prosperous variation not passively suiting the circumstances only but prompt to react to and take advantage of them. Responding probably in the first instance to some obscure stimulus in the environment, it is itself endowed with an innate impulse to become and be ; as vital outcome of the organic unity from which it proceeds it embodies an intrinsic unity straining after a specific realization of self. There- fore it is that in the reciprocal interaction between it and the environment it is not just the passive Heredity, Variation and Genius ij object of a process of outside natural selection, but itself works on the environment to modify it in some measure to its liking : there is natural election and adaption on its part as well as natural selection by the environment, an inherent struc- tural impulse or vital tension urging it to fulhl its proper being. The good quality finds good in bad surroundings and profits by it, the bad quality chooses bad in good surroundings and feeds its growth thereby. * Is the creative growth of an organic variation, after all is said, always a matter only of the slow accumulation of minute additions through im- memorial time ? Is it absolutely true that nature never makes a leap ? May it not perhaps be that the organic impulsion sometimes reaches such a tension in young forming matter plastic to sur- rounding influences as to issue in a sort of evolu- tional explosion, an extraordinary impulse of the organic Mux being then moulded by circumstances into an upleap of life ? An upleap in that case within the bounds of the same species ; perhaps * The term natural selection has not perhaps been quite a happy designation seeing that it is apt to be misunderstood and used to signify an all-potent outside agency which arbitrarily selects and fashions, if it do not actually cause the suitable variation ; whereas variation and environment select as well as are selected, interacting as part of a common nature in the pro- duction of an equilibrium, and the variation grows by mutual adaptation and combination. Neither organic cell nor indi- vidual organism could ever exist separate from its environing medium with which it is not in conflict only but in communion. 2 1 8 Heredity, Variation and Genius even sometimes into another so-called species, for intermediates often bridge the gaps between species and confound distinctions. A not entirely strange event, if it happen, seeing that when a common human stock gives birth to an uncommon genius nature does make a very palpable leap, progressing then by multiple proportion rather than by continuous addition. The individual mortal, like the individual plant or animal, bursts the formidable fetters of custom, always so mightily potent to make men what they are, and to keep them as they are and as for the most part they like to be. The conjecture may perhaps exact support from the diligent observations of the eminent Dutch botanist De Vries on a long series of breedings and crossings of plants. The results of his numerous and industrious experiments have fully convinced him that the ordinary continuous variations occurring normally, on which Darwin supposed natural selection to work, are merely indefinite fluctuations due to light, soil, space, climate, moisture and the like conditions, and take no part in the origin of species ; although they are of the nature of acquired characters and capable of hereditary transmission they are not naturally selected to make new starts of evolution. On a multitude of careful observations he has based a theory of so-called mutations which is gaining large acceptance in biology — the theory that definite co-ordinate variations of discon- Heredity, Variation and Genizis \g tinuous kind, new forms or sports of complete and definite character, arise suddenly and abnormally by a single step, and that it is from such abnormal variations, definite and stable from the outset, owing nothing to natural selection, that species originate. Once started, thus fully equipped, those well suited to their surroundings survive and increase by natural selection. Most of our garden fruits and vegetables, he says, are un- doubtedly so formed ; they are not the products of a long course of selection, they are sudden sports which as a rule are transmitted to following generations. Here then is unexpectedly opened a by-way of return to a sort of special creation, to the naive delight of shallow theology ; and the doctrine of Darwin, although not ousted, is dethroned from the commanding position which it occupied in seeming security. Its range of action was appar- ently overrated ; scientific enquiry, as often falls out when it is captivated by the brilliance of a new and fruitful theory, being hypnotized for a time and held in such slavish dependence as entirely to neglect observation of contradictory instances even when they are staring : prone ever to neglect a new theory for years after its first quiet enunciation, and then, this once rescued from oblivion and accepted, for years to neglect everything which agrees not with it. Neverthe- less natural selection still holds its proper ground, for it is thought to preserve the fittest forms once 20 Heredity, Variation and Genius they have been brought into being, although it was not the means by which they originated. Instead of speaking of the origin of species by means of natural selection, as Darwin did, we are henceforth to understand that natural selection comes into action only as the means of prosperous survival after the specific mutation has started on its independent career. If specific characters have thus originated on a sudden by a single step, it seems natural to assume definite structural predispositions in germ- cells, ultramicroscopic prefigurations in them, which duly evolve into definite structural muta- tions. It is not difficult to imagine that in the innermost of the infinitely minute and invisible are laid architectural plans or dispositions of atoms as definite as those which are manifest in outward and visible structure. To a creature infinitesi- mally minute enough to dwell inside it and behold its wonderful structure the interior of the atom might disclose a more complex maze of swift and orderly motions than the starry firmament displays, which after all looks a com- parative sluggish and rigid system plodding through the fixed function of advanced age.* Be * Not sluggish, it is true, in its voyage from unknown whence to unknown whither, seeing that the solar system can be conceived as a mere atom travelling some four hundred millions of miles per annum from somewhere to somewhere — perhaps with all its hurry only to come round to the same place in some four hundred millions of years and to go on repeating Heredity, Variation and Genius 21 that as it may with the invisibly minute, having regard to the multitude of co-ordinate elements and interfusing energies incorporate in a complex organism it is a legitimate conclusion that, besides the fundamental protoplasmic adaptation to the conditions of the environment whereby fluctuating variations are being constantly put forth, there is in the intimately and intricately correlated parts of its complex constitution, thrilled with the organic conatus ficiuii, an intrinsic aptitude to specific changes under certain unknown con- ditions ; a sort of pregnant throe or internal spon- taneity, so to speak, whereby the mutation proper to the type is evolved. Obviously such a complex organism cannot respond to the external stimulus in a simple and direct way like the unicellular body ; it must needs react in circuitous and com- plicated ways, passing the impression made on it through numerous and various intricate mechan- isms of its special structures — each of these more- over embedding in its intimate constitution the organic reminiscences of innumerable adaptive responses through the ages of its special forma- tion— and in the event so specially disturbing the internal equilibrium as to give rise to the ensuing its weary cycle until, like a spinning top, it slows down and loses its stability. If a star takes two thousand years to send its ray of light to mortal eyes, it is manifest that the universe is not mightily concerned with what " any mortal mixture of earth's mould " can perceive or think of its doings. 22 Heredity, Variation and Genius mutation. The novel output which in some species of plants apparently occurs at long and uncertain intervals, abruptly and unaccountably, though it look now like a special creation or spontaneous product, is just the natural and neces- sary physical effect of the internal complicated processes. After all is said, the organic composi- tion of a species may well be as definite and special as that of a chemical compound, more complex vital compositions occurring not other- wise than as more complex chemical compositions are formed in the orderly ascent of things, and the fit mutation owe more to the inherent infor- mation of the vital unity from which it proceeds than to external determination. A notable fact in heredity is the occasional reversion to an old mould of individual being, a son or daughter who is unlike either parent reproducing with curious fidelity the likeness or peculiarities of some remote ancestor. In the same remarkable manner two persons descended from widely separate branches of a common stock sometimes exhibit a singular likeness, so close perhaps as almost to seem a reincarnation. Evi- dently there is a tendency of reproductive germi- nal elements, under the impact of some shock to their customary combinations, to revert to a former combination either in whole or in part, to hit again upon a stable state in which they have been before. For here as throughout the universe unstable tends to fall into more stable matter in Heredity, Variation and Genius 23 the endless cycle of becomings and unbecomings of things from everlasting to everlasting. An instructive instance of the same tendency is seen when among variations which continually occur in allied species of animals the abnormal of one is just a reversion to the normal of another species. It is notable that abnormal peculiarities in man are normal in his next of kin — in the gibbon, the orang, the chimpanzee and the gorilla. Varia- tions, even when they seem human, are not there- fore always the new things they seem ; they are sometimes returns to old characters, reminiscences of remote ancestral processes. And this is true of mental as well as of bodily characters, for stray persons are here and there met with — not neces- sarily only the monkey-like idiots to be found in asylums — who exhibit curiously simian-like like- nesses of mind which no education can ever efface : simian-like ancestral vestigies discover- able in human mind as well as in the grasp of the human baby's toes and fingers and its biting or sucking of its toes. Must we then in such cases suppose, according to Mendelian laws of separate inheritance of characters, that unit-characters of the original common stock have been segregated and laid by latent to show themselves again openly and actively after countless ages of evolution ? New organic variations being less stable are less likely to last ; they take a long time to get well fixed in descent and are easily unfixed when 24 Heredity, Variation and Genius they are recent. The domesticated animal loses acquired characters when it is turned wild, revert- ing gradually through generations towards the savage type suiting its ruder environment ; gains of domestic culture, being useless, are not in- herited, having no survival-value do not survive ; they tend to the elimination of the creatures hurt rather than helped by the possession of them and to the restoration of the structural form better fitted to survive without them — of the natural equilibrium that is in the life of relation between organism and environment. In process of degra- dation as of development the law of adaptive response to the external conditions of life rules more or less evidently. In like notable manner the moral virtues of the human race, being late and loose conquests of culture, still need the con- stant support and nourishment of a suitable social medium ; they are easily effaced in uncivilized surroundings, where indeed they would be not merely useless but an incommodity or positive disservice to their possessors.* Among a tribe of low savages a life moulded on the Sermon on the * Noteworthy is it how loose-knit to character and easily undone are the altruistic acquisitions in comparison with the self-regarding instincts ; pride, vanity, envy, emulation, and the like passions can outlive the moral virtues lasting longer and stronger sometimes than the love of life. Witness, for | example, the case of a lady dying of cancer who was wretchedly unhappy until she got a nurse who could do her hair in the usual fashionable and extravagantly towzled manner, when Heredity, Variation and Genius 25 Mount would not fare well, no better perhaps than it would now in civilized nations ; it could not be a happy life and might not be a long one ; and the strict adoption of the lofty principles of that discourse by the tribe would be more likely to lead to its extinction than to its continuance on earth. How clean and soon the moral gains of culture may be put off by civilized peoples is shown by the hideous explosion of the brutal instincts, self-conservative, predatory, and sexual, when the customary restraints are temporarily swept away by panic or by passion. Neither reason nor moral sense makes the least appreci- able appeal to the brute inside the man the func- tion of whose finest mental superstructure is thus temporarily effaced, as happens so easily when the ambient social medium is removed and the inflamed basic passions explode violently. For the time being he is as naked and not ashamed as the infant on which the constantly applied and steadily moulding influences of the social body into which it is born have not yet put on a fitting she was immensely comforted. Their mental mechanisms, like the mechanisms of animal instincts, are now so infixed in structure that they pass unchanged from generation to genera- tion ; bespeak indeed the very beginnings of social life in which they had their birth ; whereas the altruistic feelings are a later and more tender growth under culture. The various laws which have been found necessary in every civilized country to curb individual propensities to do wrong are just a complicated machinery to transform the natural into the social man. 26 Heredity, Variation and Genius moral and intellectual vesture ; without which, notwithstanding its innate human heritage, it would, were the experiment made, grow up into a repulsive spectacle of brute-like savagery. So much does steady fashioning do to make man by habit of growth the decent being which he is apt to think he is by natural grace. In the last war against China by the allied troops of Europe and Japan, when rape, robbery and murder were hideous features of inglorious victories, the Japanese only were comparatively blameless ; for they, urged by the strong motive to rank as a civilized nation, advisedly and rigidly enforced for the occasion a rule of decent restraint which was brutally outraged by the unloosened passions of the Christian nations. Looking to stand on an equal moral level with the Christians Japan enjoyed the flattering surprise to behold itself an artificial exception and example. So quickly and com- pletely in stress of trial can be put off the moral vesture which has been painfully put on for nearly two thousand years and still fits but loosely. Very different it is with the stable structure of a disused organ or instinct which, dwindling in slow atrophy through the ages after it has ceased to be of use to the species, long persists as a discoverable remainder. The anatomist still detects the relics of lower limbs hidden in the whale's sides, and the basic instincts of the savage lie deep and strong in the civilized man. Nor could it go well with the human species if its Heredity, Variation and Genius 27 - r-? elemental passions were extinguished, for without them the qualities of moral being would want ; root ; they could not grow as they do by natural process of development, and blossom into fit spiritualizations of the sensual ; for the animal nature is the crude material upon which social ^ culture impresses the moral elegancies.* Whether the disappearance of disused organs in the species is owing to the direct inheritance of the wasting effects of parental disuse, as Lamarck supposed, or really, as Weismann maintains, to the con- sequences of Panmixia whereby the average structure is steadily lowered in the species because, being of no benefit to the individuals possessing them, they are no longer fostered by natural selection, that is a question which is still actively disputed. Disputed too perhaps with over-eager * To despise and maltreat his lower animal nature and to strive to rise out of it, even to get rid of it, may be logical in one who believes in the fall of man from a high state of spiritual being sometime on earth ; but is absurd intellectually and demoralizing in him who believes that mankind from its begin- ning has been rising and is destined to go on rising to higher being ; whose ideal is not a dim memory of a sinless state to be painfully regained, but an obscure aspiration to a blessed state of perfection to be achieved and enjoyed. He must respect and wisely use the forces of his animal passions, perceiving and acknowledging that his sins and sufferings as well as his virtues and joys have had their proper function in the process of his natural evolution — and will be present in its perfected essence. If man had been all virtue and no vice, he would probably have been extinct long ago. 28 Heredity, Variation and Genius and profitless energy because of a lack of clear comprehension of the problem and of the neces- sary precision of terms. Obviously the answer to the controverted ques- tion whether acquired characters are transmitted depends upon what is meant by the word acquired. According to Lamarck's theory of evolutional adaptation (so long neglected and so much mis- represented) hares have the swift pace providen- tially fitting them now to be hunted for human sport because they have inherited the organic values of ancestral practice. Giraffes have long necks because by stretching their necks to reach food which was almost out of reach they thus initiated a minute modification of structure which their offspring inherited and gradually developed. It was not only that by virtue of fitter structure they survived in times of scarcity and propagated their like when their less fortunate fellows died of starvation, but growth of structure by exercise of its successful function bequeathed more capital to the species, infixing something of the second nature which habit of function made. The hornless ancestors of deer developed thick frontal bones and eventual horns by rubbing and ramming their heads against one another in fight and play and transmitting the thickening gains to their progeny ; notwithstanding that, looking to the results of such development, it is not very evident how a thirty- pointed monstrous antler weighing nearly twenty pounds could ever be so useful to the animal Heredity, Variation and Genius 29 for attack and defence as a less cumbrous and straighter horn might have been. Does nature which manifestly makes such seeming prodigal waste of material and so many seeming failures in its process of evolution, after all, work entirely on utilitarian lines ? Or is it perchance that man just creates the purposes he finds in things, as he himself creates the world in which he finds them ? However that be, in no case was it meant that the acquired character was actually trans- mitted as such to the immediate descendant. The character necessarily dies with the parent's body ; nor could the microscopic germ contain in its minute self the exact structural equivalent of its parent's acquisition. Lamarck surely never imagined that the particular offspring inherited more than a predisposition to its parent's special exercise of function and sequent growth of struc- ture. The real question is whether ancestral practice ever produces the smallest imaginable modification of the germ in the acquired direction, initiating an inclination of character which grows by adaptation and gradual accumulation of incre- ments through the ages ; whether in fact the germ inherits a special tendency, declaring itself in feeling as a want, to the formation of a similar character and, thus inheriting, develops it further than the parent in similarly adapted surroundings by virtue of the innate gift and intrinsic impulse. Does it perchance thus possess in invested capital something of that which its parent laboriously acquired ? 30 Heredity, Variation and Genius As in the nervous system of the child now is the innate organized capacity quickly to learn to walk and talk, a capacity which its ape-like ancestors had to acquire slowly and painfully by long and repeated adaptations generation after generation from the very cradle of humanity — still outlining rudely and briefly in the successive stages of its embryonic development an epitome of the procession of life from its beginnings on earth — so in the occult atomic structure of the germ may offspring inherit a natural drift or tendency originated by ancestral slow acquisition. The growth of such inherited tendency by off- spring need not of course take place in all the members of a succeeding generation and may be manifest only in the fulness of time. To germ as to mortal happen time and chance, and each fares well or ill as its fate decrees. In the myste- rious germinal unions in which so many very complex genital factors and conditions are in- volved it is only seldom that the combining ele- ments are so luckily complementary that the perfect product ensues. Moreover, the possible mischances to which a particular germ-tendency acquired by parental experience is liable are in- calculable : it may not survive directly in trans- mission because in the fusion of its germ with the germ of the other sex it is checked, curbed, suppressed, qualified, or quite sorted out and laid by latent, or even perhaps broken up into elements which, obeying their affinities, go to form Heredity, Variation and Genius 31 other combinations. Even if it survive, there is a future environment, favourable or unfavourable, to reckon with. Time, again, which is so pre- cious within the brief compass of a single life is of no account in the life of the species. And the Lamarckians may justly claim the right which the exclusive advocates of natural selection so freely use, to postulate a long course of time for the minute cumulative additions necessary to convert the initial tendency or variation which is of no imaginable use into structure that serves an end. When the wild pansy is planted in garden soil it does not change at once ; the varia- tions in the colour and size of flowers appear in the course of generations, never in the first genera- tion, the transformation by external influences being gradual. Restrict the term " acquired cha- racters " to the manifest inheritance of the manifest acquisitions of parental structure, excluding the notion of acquired germ-tendencies to evolve duly in succeeding generations, and the non-inheritance is not likely to be seriously contested. Is it not strange that the innate boon or bane of acquired parental character has been so abso- lutely denied to offspring ? The theory of Weis- mann as originally propounded by him and eagerly acclaimed by his followers, although now appa- rently modified in some measure, was that no quality or character acquired by parents through the functions and habits of life in the changes and chances of environment was ever constitutionally 32 Heredity, Variation and Genius inherited. Neither offspring of hare or of giraffe profited anything by parental habits of life and growth ; all the gradual gains of evolution were the result of the accumulation of successive small variations favouring the survival of the creatures in which they accidentally occurred. Nature just selected the fit spontaneous variation and went on selecting the fit additions to it generation after generation, no variation owing the least intrinsic predisposition to any constitutional modifications of the well or ill functioning parent. Such is the large call made on an unlimited number of spontaneous or accidental variations — so many apt special creations — without any explanation of their origins, with the positive assurance only that parental habits of function had nothing to do with them ; for natural selection does not make the initial rudiment — that is admitted — it only takes advantage of it when made, although with an amazing prescience it is thought to make the fit choice and additions when the nascent variation is so minute or so circumstanced as yet to be no conceivable emolument, perhaps even an incon- venience or seeming disservice. If, as assumed, the highly favoured creature which puts forth the mysteriously begotten varia- tion does so spontaneously, its offspring in succes- sion putting it forth spontaneously when it is lucky enough ; and if not it then another creature of the species, and thenceforth others here and there sporadically in ever increasing numbers Heredity, Variation and Genius 3 until the species consists of those having it, those not so gifted by grace having died out for want of it ; that means that from the interesting hour when the union of the two primary germs of ape-man and ape-woman issued in the first variation lead- ing to the development of the human species, thenceforth onwards through numbers numberless of years, no individual constitutional modification has had the least direct effect upon the character of the progeny. The acquisitions of human evolu- tion through the ages, all the differences between Pithecanthropus erectus and man at his highest estate, have been wholly and solely due either to so-called spontaneous variations, or to variations caused by unions of parental germs and the sequent developments of such progressive varia- tions by natural selection.* Now certainly, what- ever may have been the case once, there is in the substance of the germ-plasm with its many pos- sible combinations of many million constituent atoms and their memories of past structural dis- positions conceivable room for any number of combinations determined by intrinsic affinities or extrinsic impulses. Along with the theory of non-inheritance of * Anatomists have been much exercised in lively disputes whether Pithecanthropus erectus, the fossil bones of which were discovered in Java in 1894, is to be considered human or anthro- poid. What is certain is that Pithecanthropus is more apelike than any known human type, more manlike than any known form of ape. 34 Heredity, Variation and Genius acquired chai-acters goes the theory that the germ-plasm is immortal ; that there is a continu- ance of actual substance from generation to gene- ration, an ever so minute part of the specific plasm contained in the parent's egg-cell — in the nucleoplasm of it — not being used up in the building of the offspring's body, as the rest of the plasm is, but sacredly reserved in a kind of holy of holies for the formation of the germ cells of the following generation to which it is substantially passed on. The body or soma only is it which is mortal ; the precious bit of sequestered germ, plasm is immortal, passing through a succession of individual conduits — through priests and pro- phets, sinners and saints, idiots and immortals — whose several modifications of characters during their lives nowise modify it. The welldoer is the unsympathetic host of a bad germ, the evildoer is redeemed by his hospitality to the good germ. Necessarily the sacred plasm dies with the indi- vidual body when that dies, but the death is then an accident not a natural death ; the natural death of the soma causing the accidental death of the germ. When Judas Iscariot hanged himself — if he did hang himself, which is problematical, seeing that one evangelist only deems so tragic an event worth mention — it was the adverse fate of the plasm which he might otherwise have trans- mitted untainted by his sinful nature. The two theories — this of a supremely fine sub- stance of quasi-spiritual and immortal essence, Heredity, Variation and Genius 35 housed and nourished for a time in a mortal body but not otherwise physiologically related to it, and that of the noninheritance of acquired characters — are largely used as mutual buttresses. To the enquiry why acquired characters may not be inherited the prompt answer is because that would be contrary to the sacred truth that the germ-plasm lives a secluded life aloof in the body ; and to the enquiry why the germ- plasm may not be affected by the sundry and manifold changes of a mortal life the equally prompt answer is because that would be contrary to the truth that acquired characters are not transmis- sible. All which would be excellent argument were either theory satisfactorily proved but may fail fully to convince so long as neither yet rests on a solid basis of proof. The bacterium which acquires increased virulence by transmission through another creature than that from which it is transferred, thus bequeathing capital made out of its new environment, violates the law of non-transmission of acquisition in fearless fashion. Thus far, too, the prolonged experiments and careful observations of De Vries on plant-life seem to disclose other instances of the breach of that supposed law, for they favour rather than disfavour the theory of such inheritance. In the end the question can only be answered positively by the exact observations and experimental re- searches of competent workers mutually and methodically co-operating in right directions of 36 Heredity, Variation and Genius enquiry : their patient labours must prove or disprove the sound or unsound speculations of impatient theory. Is it true that the germ-cell forms no living part of the body in which it lives and on which it depends for life, but is something living in yet practically aloof from it, in but not of it ? While every other differentiated cell is an integral part of an organic unity, in community of vital inter- action, represented in its whole life and function, incapable of living separate, are we to think that the germ-cell or any part of it has no such inti- mate physiological relations ; that it lodges there monklike in close seclusion, independent and indifferent, immersed in its present self and silently brooding on its life to come ; that it only exacts the nourishment it needs from its living medium, thriving well or ill according as it is well or ill fed ; affected it is true by toxins which hurt its nutrition, but not otherwise hurt or helped by its organic environment, let the modifications of this from birth to death be never so great ? In that case the conclusion follows that when in his maturity or later a person born of a poor and vicious stock, but subjected afterwards systematically to good influences in wholesome moral and intellectual surroundings, emits a re- productive germ it contains no trace of that which has been acquired by him and incorporated in his structure ; and again that the reproductive Heredity, Variation and Genius i>7 germ of a well-born person debased and degraded by bad training in unwholesome moral and physical surroundings suffers not in the least from the acquired mental and physical degenera- tion. The immortal stream of life-plasm thus flowing down through a succession of individual conduits, neither purified nor polluted in its passage, it is perhaps a little sad to think that in the painfully perfecting process of humanization through the ages the seed of the righteous profits nothing by his father's righteousness, as it is certainly strange to think that the germ-plasm is the one bodily secretion which is nowise used and renewed in the economy of the organic commonwealth. More agreeable might it be to the notion of a silent and continuous evolution of things to imagine that every year's or even every day's plasm witnesses to the individual character of the time and circumstances. Withal the conviction might instil a sterner sense of responsibility throughout the season of procrea- tive activity did Nature allow the least considera- tion of consequences ever then to enter the procreator's mind. Looking far enough back into the origins and deep enough into the processes of organic evolu- tion, it may someday be perceived and acknow- ledged that reason itself, which is the discharged function of man's superior brain, is nothing else but the incorporation in his complex cerebral organization of the cumulative adaptations to the "-> 8 Heredity, Variation and Genius conditions of his environment from the begin- nings of his being ; just the structuralized ratio in mental organization, the static reason, of which the conscious reason is the function. No one reasons by the reason he is conscious of, any more than he imagines by the imagination which he forms ; his conscious reason is the performed reason, as his imagination is the formed imagina- tion ; both products of the unconscious or very partially conscious processes of the underlying cerebral operations. Man being the Nature-made means by which Nature is made better in its process of evolution, the same rational processes ruling in it and displayed so abundantly in the marvellous structures of organic life, vegetable and animal, are carried on through his mental organization : life in mind a continuation of life in the world. In the process of evolutional equi- libration between him and the outer world it is Nature which structuralizes in him the reason which he finds in Nature and, because he is con- scious of, magnifies mightily and is so mightily proud of. Consciousness is just the illumination of vital experience in practice, the reflective out- come of the realized action." * Gross materialism it will perhaps be said, and to say so be deemed a sufficient refutation. "One calls materialist every philosophy which defines thought as the product of a compound whose elements do not imply thought." But why does not a superior philosophy exactly define thought for us ? That would help us to understand what are its elements and Heredity, Variation and Geniics 39 III. Objections can certainly be raised to bar instant assent to the doctrine of a cloistered seclusion of the germ-plasm. Whence the infinite possibility of variations without help from without, the accu- mulated gains of development through the ages, the exhaustless evolution of new energy without any corresponding involution, the eternal unfold- ing of things without a precedent infolding ? Although it is true that by calling the variations spontaneous it is not supposed that they are special creations springing into miraculous being inexhaustibly, meant only to imply that although coming somehow from somewhere the unknown causes of their origin and initial sproutings are yet mysteries, it is still asking much in the absence of positive knowledge to grant all the creative independence claimed for them. The causes and laws of variational origins may after all have no small bearing on the question whether acquired what they do or do not imply. Is thought reason, or is it strictly only conscious reason? And if ever unconscious reason, where and by what is the rational work done ? The doctrine of rational materialism, I imagine, is that a static reason or ratio in mental structuralization which becomes explicit in thought is implied in the justly proportionate or ratio-na.1 constitution : reason invisible structure, as structure is visible reason. If reason in mental structure becomes by some most subtile process of cerebral reflection conscious, is that really more wonderful than for a wondering savage to see himself by reflection in a mirror ? 40 Heredity, Variation and Genius characters are inherited ; for it is not unlikely that their origins are to be found in obscure adaptive responses to the conditions of the environment which are transmitted. That two complex human germs, modified and qualified as such germs have been by successive combinations through countless generations, in- heriting withal qualities dating from the very beginnings of life, can in combining produce varia- tions without end is easily imaginable, but how could the two primal cells from which the count- less millions of living creatures originally sprang acquire such infinite possibilities of variation ? When the primitive unicellular organism divided into two equal halves and these halves divided in their turn, and so continuously onwards, a series of equal divisions and subdivisions might have gone on unchanged world without end had there been no change in the descendants. But inas- much as the divisions could hardly always, if ever, be exactly equal, no two things on earth being exactly equal, and those which survived in the struggle for existence had sometimes to adapt themselves to different external conditions — and the least imaginable external change would not fail to cause a suitable reaction — they necessarily acquired individual peculiarities, transmitting these when they divided, and so started the variations which multiplied to build the multicellular orga- nism. Here then was a direct transmission of acquired characters : the first differentiations Heredity, Variation and Genius 41 plainly due to the inherited effects of the action of the environment on the individual : evolutional variation through involutional adaptation the original cause and primal rule of Nature. Yes, say Weismann and his submissive followers, that was so once but it is not so now ; such action only went on in the lowest unicellular organisms ; when the cells were differentiated in multicellular organisms the primal rule was abolished, the distinction between body-cell and germ-cell made absolute, and the transmission of acquired charac- ters to the germs abruptly ended. Thenceforth onward and upward from the simplest multi- cellular bodies to the highest human germ-cells through untold millions of years the variations have been either spontaneous starts, or due to successive combinations of germ-cells, none of which owed anything but sustenance to the vitally environing body or to the larger physical environ- ment in which they and it chanced to be placed. An inexhaustible fund of variation possibilities with rigid exclusion of outside influence even so much as to excite the intrinsic variation, that is the apparent assumption. Without doubt the rule of organic progress from the simple and general to the complex and special is for a successive division of labour to go along with a successive differentiation of cells. In multicellular organisms the cells were first differentiated for growth and reproduction ; after that the body-cells underwent further differentia- 42 Heredity, Variation and Genius tions to constitute the various tissues and organs, some still retaining the capacity to reproduce themselves, but all failing in the growing stiffness of old age to do even that ; the reproductive cell alone able to reproduce the whole body. And not then except by conjunction of germs when, as happened in process of differentiation the sexes were separated, first on the same plant or animal and afterwards on different individuals. But does it therefore necessarily follow that the body-cells lose all trace of original reproductive capacity, or that the reproductive cell is nowise affected by the modifications of their functions during the life of the individual ? May it not be that morbid growths sometimes tell of awakened memories ? Specialized parts owning a remotely common origin, notwithstanding their differentiations, are certainly apt to retain silent memories of a general function. It is noteworthy that the blind man's face appears sometimes to regain a sensibility to the proximity of objects which has long been the special function of the differentiated visual sense ; he feels with his face at a distance, so to speak, the mother-sense of touch vaguely resuming in stress of need functions long delegated to a specialized organ of vision. What happens again when fcetal structure is produced in another part of the body than that which is its natural home ? Is a particle of the cloistered nuclear plasm broken off which after vague wanderings settles there ? Or does a differentiated cell, suddenly Heredity, Variation and Genius 4 1 remembering, resume a long forgotten primal function ? However that be, it is plain that in the vast and varied procession of organic Nature a separate reserve of reproductive capacity was found neces- sary to continue progress, specialization of parts tending to dissociation and consequent sterility of general function in tissues as in mortals. Could there be any thing more exactly and intelligently specialized for its lifework than a bee or anything less intelligent outside its specialty ? Men are likewise more or less intel- ligently specialized machines, and for the most part little intelligent outside their mental auto- matisms ; a new and pregnant notion springing up outside the regular grooves of thought being a sort of explosive shock which occasions violent reactions of antipathy, contempt and angry re- sistance, to be succeeded haply in due time by quieter reactions of assimilation and adaptation. Nothing is more certain than that portions or sections of the mental organization (the so-called one and indivisible mind) as well as of the motor organization do get set in fixed forms of auto- matic activity, and that over-specialization of en- quiry and thought leads to intellectual narrowness and consequent absence of deep insight and wide outlook ; for which reason in the mental develop- ment of the human race there is always need of the man of large genius, not over-specialized, to absorb, collate, co-ordinate and fructify the results 44 Heredity, Variation and Genius of specialization apt to run into barren details. The genius, however, would be little worth, an ingenious speculator only, who, unresponsive to outside influences, did not absorb and merge into himself all the special values, present and pre- existent, and fuse them into the excellent varia- tional outcome. He is one with Nature, and his achievement is Nature fulfilled through him, because he is susceptible to every external stimulus which educes the capacity and conduces to the complete development of a richly endowed being ; expressing finally when and as he can, concentrated in defined form of art or invention, the distilled essence of the crude material which he has consciously and unconsciously imbibed. Into the superior protoplasmic susceptibility of his sympathetic brain steal imperceptibly the subtile influences of surrounding Nature, inter- working there — for the most part subconsciously — to be projected outwards in forms of beauty and invention. A second objection may be urged to the dogma of the non-inheritance of acquired characters. Whence comes the right to fix a complete dis- tinction between the reproductive processes which go on regularly in the organs and tissues of the body with their several secretions and excretions and the product of the whole similar reproduc- tive process of the body, which is essentially an overgrowth and, so to speak, excreted secretion of it ? A secretion, that is, not used internally Heredity, Variation and Genius 45 for the maintenance of a passing organism which has its brief day and dies, but ejected outwardly for the maintenance of a continuing species which has its long day ere it dies. For when all is said nutrition is much like a continual reproduction and reproduction an excess of nutrition. In estimating the possible working of the body upon its reproductive germ, it is necessary to understand and bear well in mind that the ques- tion is not of the set action of an unchanging bodily fabric ; it is a question of the whole bodily functions in process of continual flux as they are modified by exercise and growth to habits of exercise and of their subsequent reactions on the constituent elements. The body is not a fixed but a modifiable fabric, function developing struc- ture ; and this more particularly in the evolution of the nervous organization and the faculties, bodily and mental, served by it in the individual life of relation during its periods of productive activity. Habits of function incorporate in struc- ture are thereafter expended as function, and every process of function involves internal effects, physical and chemical, of subtile and wide-reach- ing vital consequence. While there may be no evident transmission of acquired characters by old and formed structures of the organism (sup- posing such to be acquired) the transmission might still conceivably take place in young plastic and forming parts capable of easy elemental reproduction. How expect in the dull, slow, 46 Heredity, Variation and Genius mechanical life which is only just alive that which may be natural in the quick, active, adaptive life which is much alive ? * On the whole it is somewhat strange to think that productive activity within the body can be severed entirely from reproductive activity by the body ; more natural, if not necessary, to think that the forming germ is somehow susceptible to its modified bodily environment, exhibiting the effects in variations which, informed by the parental constitution as it then actually is, witness to parental acquisitions of structure. The opinion that an elementary particle of a bodily unity specialized for reproductive purposes lives in physiological seclusion is directly contrary to the whole trend of scientific enquiry, which goes to show that when one organ suffers or joys all the organs suffer or joy more or less with it, being members of one body and members one of another ; and that inevitably because of the inti- mate physical association, nervous and circula- tory, and of the co-operation to one vital end of the several very complex and subtile chemical pro- * Although life is habitually thought and spoken of in the abstract as a constant entity, the word sufficing without thought of its signification, in the concrete it is really of very diverse quality and value, ranging in dignity con- tinuously from physico-chemical to psychical activity. The epidermic cell is not on the same life-level with the cerebral cell, any more than the Protococcus with a Prime Minister or the Amaba with an Archbishop. Heredity, Variation and Genuis 47 cesses of the various parts of a living organism. As the so-called internal secretions of organs regularly pour into the circulating fluids of the body unstable substances which in continual flux of compositions and decompositions, by means of numerous and various fermenting enzymes, excite or inhibit its functions in various subtile and yet inscrutable ways — each organ, too, perhaps, con- tributing specially acting chemical agents to do its special work — it is hard to believe that any part of it lies outside physical and chemical influence. All the more hard seeing that when the repro- ductive organs at puberty begin to form the pre- cious cells destined to continue the species their activity is accompanied by, if it does not cause, a profound modification of the whole mental and physical being. Youth and maiden, instinct with the productive energy of Nature, then feel and think as they never felt and thought before, being thrilled with new sensibilities by virtue of nervous subtile changes yet undetectable by the nicest aids to sense ; with which changes of adolescence go along fresh sensibilities to the social environ- ment and physical growths of moral feeling that were lacking in the child. A third objection proper to be taken into account is that such gross and manifest deteriora- tions of parents as bodily mutilations and injuries, scars, pierced or cut ears or noses, artificially deformed feet and waists, docked ears and tails, and the like, cannot rightly be called acquired 48 Heredity, Variation and Genius characters. * They surely mark a loss not a gain of individual character. The tailless cat has suffered a deprivation of, not gained an addition to, its structural character. Is there not an essential difference between the mutilation or injury which, being a loss, is therefore a subtrac- tion from character, and the modification which is a constituent part of its living being and growth ? The latter, being part of its character, might well be inherited in the germ-tendency ; the former, being not part but loss, is not likely to be inherited. Progress in the life of relation between the organism and its environment may then have reproductive consequences which injury or muti- lation cannot have, the plastic forming part still obeying the primal law of unicellular acquisition which no longer rules, in the rigid formed part. But what, it may be asked, of the gradual wasting and ultimate disappearance of a disused organ which has become useless in the changed conditions of the struggle for existence ? Is the slow wasting due wholly, as alleged, to the con- sequences of Panmixia whereby, owing to indis- criminate unions of individuals some of which have the organ poorly developed and are at no disadvantage on that account, its average size is gradually reduced in the species, it being no longer fostered by natural selection ? Admitting * " It can hardly be doubted," says Weismann, " that mutila- tions are acquired characters." Heredity, Variation and Genius 49 the certain effects of such a slowly eliminating process, it may still be argued that an unprofitable organ not needed and not used in the life of the animal does not stand on the same footing in regard to inheritance by offspring as an active and useful organ. Can that which furthers the well- being and maintenance of the species, working as a factor in the order of Nature's being and becom- ing, be compared to that which, being nowise a benefit, but now an incommodity or actual let and hindrance, belongs to the order of disintegra- tion and passing away of things ? Moreover, the disuse of an organ in a complex body of vitally interrelated parts can hardly fail to have some effect upon the life and legacies of the integral unity. Whatever its nature and value the internal secretion once contributed to the circulating fluids is no longer available. A fourth reflection, though apparently remote yet not quite irrelevant, to be made in relation to the doctrine of non-inheritance of acquired char- acters is that mortal minds, transient and infini- tesimally minute pulses of an infinite universe, cannot choose but represent or picture things in terms of five — practically two — very limited senses impressionable only by a few and comparatively coarse stimuli, even when sense is fortified with the most ingenious and powerful instrumental aids. So it comes to pass that shut out from observation of the invisible and intangible, all the infinity, mighty and minute, which lies 5