id
by his wonderful playing on the piano.

In the lineage of these prodigies has there been found a single
ancestor capable of explaining these faculties, as astonishing as they
are premature? If to the absence of a cause in their progenitors is
added the fact that genius is not hereditary, that Mozarts,
Beethovens, and Dantes have left no children stamped from birth as
prodigies of genius, we shall be forced to the conclusion that, within
the limits it has taken up, materialism is unable to explain heredity.

A few more words must be said on physical heredity to explain why
moral qualities in men of average development are often on a par with
the same in their parents.

In reality, the physical germs only multiply the organic elements of
the ovule, and as this latter contains the cell-types of all the
tissues, it follows that these cell-types will possess the qualities
of the tissues that exist in the parents. For instance, germs of
sufferers from arterio-sclerosis will supply a vascular apparatus
predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply
germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be
below the normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which
characterise the tuberculous subject; those of sanguine constitution
will transmit a faculty for vital assimilation and considerable
corpuscular production, and so on.[72]

In this transmission there are two main factors: the male and the
female germs. The former represents force, it imprints on the ovule
the initial vital vibration which is to be that of each of the cells
of the organism in course of construction. The function of this germ
may be studied more easily in animals, because their heredity is not
complicated by the individual differences due to the mental vehicle.
The stallion supplies the vital qualities--the blood, _i.e._, the
vivacity, _brio_, pace; physical resistance comes from the mare. To
sum up, the modalities of matter are supplied by the feminine germ.

Peculiarities of form proceed from several causes. Phrenology and
physiognomy are sciences, though the studies hitherto known by these
names are almost valueless because they have not been carried on with
the necessary scientific precision. Doubtless Gall and Lavater
possessed the gift of penetrating both mind and heart, as was also the
case with Mlle. Lenormand Desbarolles and the genuine graphologists;
but this gift was not the result of mathematical