and the mother's part. But the living reality contradicted the theory
almost at every point. Heredity, instead of being resemblance, was an
effort toward resemblance thwarted by circumstances and environment.
And he had arrived at what he called the hypothesis of the abortion of
cells. Life is only motion, and heredity being a communicated motion,
it happened that the cells in their multiplication from one another
jostled one another, pressed one another, made room for themselves,
putting forth, each one, the hereditary effort; so that if during this
struggle the weaker cells succumbed, considerable disturbances took
place, with the final result of organs totally different. Did not
variation, the constant invention of nature, which clashed with his
theories, come from this? Did not he himself differ from his parents
only in consequence of similar accidents, or even as the effect of
larvated heredity, in which he had for a time believed? For every
genealogical tree has roots which extend as far back into humanity as
the first man; one cannot proceed from a single ancestor; one may
always resemble a still older, unknown ancestor. He doubted atavism,
however; it seemed to him, in spite of a remarkable example taken from
his own family, that resemblance at the end of two or three
generations must disappear by reason of accidents, of interferences,
of a thousand possible combinations. There was then a perpetual
becoming, a constant transformation in this communicated effort, this
transmitted power, this shock which breathes into matter the breath of
life, and which is life itself. And a multiplicity of questions
presented themselves to him. Was there a physical and intellectual
progress through the ages? Did the brain grow with the growth of the
sciences with which it occupied itself? Might one hope, in time, for a
larger sum of reason and of happiness? Then there were special
problems; one among others, the mystery of which had for a long time
irritated him, that of sex; would science never be able to predict, or