teaching as to the evolution or gradual
development of the human race accept with equanimity the universal
observation as to the development of the human individual,--mind as
well as body. The animal ancestry of the race is surely no more
disturbing to philosophical or religious beliefs than the germinal
origin of the individual, and yet the latter is a fact of
universal observation which cannot be relegated to the domain of
hypothesis or theory, and which can not be successfully denied....
Now we know that the child comes from the germ cells which are not
made by the bodies of the parents but have arisen by the division
of the antecedent germ cell. _Every cell comes from a pre-existing
cell_ by a process of division, and _every germ cell comes from a
pre-existing germ cell_. Consequently it is not possible to hold,
that the body generates germ cells, nor that the soul generates
souls. The only possible scientific position is that the _mind_ or
soul as well as the body develops from the _germ_.

"No fact in human experience is more certain than that the mind
develops by gradual and natural processes from a simple condition
which can scarcely be called mind at all; no fact in human
experience is fraught with greater practical and philosophical
significance than this, and yet no fact is more generally
disregarded." Conklin.

"Doubtless the elements of which _consciousness_ develops are
_present in the germ cells_, in the same sense that the elements
of the other psychic processes or of the organs of the body are
there present; not as a miniature of the adult condition, but
rather in the form of elements or factors, which by long series of
combinations and transformations, due to interactions with one
another and with the environment, give rise to the fully developed
condition.... It is an interesting fact that in man, and in
several other animals which may be assumed to have a sense of
identity, the nerve cells, especially those of the _brain_, _cease
dividing_ at an early age, and these identical cells persist
throughout the remainder of life."...

"The hen does not produce the egg, but the egg produces the hen
and also other eggs. Individual traits are not transmitted from
the hen to the egg, but they develop out of germinal factors which
are carried along from _cell to c