tary nature of the
cell. In growth, the nucleus splits in half, a wall grows between and each
new cell has half the original factors,

Female _ovum_ and male _sperm_ (the cells concerned with reproduction)
divide, thus losing half their factors, and when brought together by sexual
intercourse form a _germ-cell_ having an equal number of factors from
mother and father.

How these factors are mingled--whether shuffled like two packs of cards, or
mixed like two paints--we do not know. If two opposite factors are brought
together, one must lie dormant. The offspring may be male or female, tall
or short; it cannot be both, nor will there be a mixture. _This rule only
applies to clearly defined factors._

We are _made by_ the _germ-plasm_ handed down to us by our ancestors; in
turn we pass it on to our children, _unaltered_, but mixed with our
partner's plasm.

"The Dead dominate the Living" for our physical and mental inheritance is a
mosaic made by our ancestors.

Variations which may or may not be inheritable do arise spontaneously, we
know not how, and by variations all living things evolve.

A child resembles his parents more than strangers, not because they made
cells "after their own image" but because both he and they got their
factors from the same source.

Man's physical and mental, and the _basis_ of his moral, qualities depend
entirely on the types of ancestral plasm combined in marriage. Man may
control his environment; his heritage is immutable. To suppress an
undesirable trait the germ-cell must unite with one that has never shown
it--one from a sound stock. An unsuitable mating in a later generation,
however, may bring it out again (for factors are indestructible), and the
individual showing it will have "reverted to ancestral type".

To give an instance: Does the son of a drunkard inherit a tendency to
drink? No! The father is alcoholic because he lacks control, consequent
upon the factors which make for control having been absent from his
germ-plasm. He passes on this lack; if the mother does the same, the defect
occurs--in a worse form--in the son. If the mother gives a control factor,
the son may be unstable or _apparently_ stable, this depending entirely on
chance, but if the mother's plasm contains a _strong_ control-factor, the
defect will lie dormant in her son, who will have self-control, though if
he marries the wrong woman he will have weak-willed children.

If the son becomes a toper, the