said to be a development of them, or, as in the appearance of nerve
force, simpler and more general forces are gathered up and
concentrated in a more special and complex mode of energy; so again
a further specialisation takes place in the development of the
nervous system, whether watched through generations or through
individual life. It is not by limiting our observations to the life
of the individual, however, who is but a link in the chain of
organic beings connecting the past with the future, that we shall
come at the full truth; the present individual is the inevitable
consequence of his antecedents in the past, and in the examination
of these alone do we arrive at the adequate explanation of him. It
behoves us, then, having found any faculty to be innate, not to rest
content there, but steadily to follow backwards the line of
causation, and thus to display, if possible, its manner of origin.
This is the more necessary with the lower animals, where so much is
innate.' [Footnote: Maudsley on the Physiology and Pathology of the
Mind, p. 73.]

The special laws of inheritance are indeed as yet unknown. All which
is clear, and all which is to my purpose is, that there is a
tendency, a probability, greater or less according to circumstances,
but always considerable, that the descendants of cultivated parents
will have, by born nervous organisation, a greater aptitude for
cultivation than the descendants of such as are not cultivated; and
that this tendency augments, in some enhanced ratio, for many
generations.

I do not think any who do not acquire--and it takes a hard effort to
acquire--this notion of a transmitted nerve element will ever
understand 'the connective tissue' of civilisation. We have here the