There is one fact about heredity which seems not to be commonly considered--namely, that each individual is really the descendant of not only his immediate parents, but of the two lines of ancestry indefinitely far back and widespread. Thus, in many instances, the dominating characteristics are not those of father and mother, but of grandparents, or of some other antecedent or collateral relatives instead. In fact, each individual in its development from the germ to adulthood passes through not only many animal forms, but through many ancestral phases of character as well. And, as in the first case, the size and strength of adult physical features depend on the stage at which growth becomes abnormally extended, perverted, or arrested, so, with regard to mental and moral qualities and their persistence under stress, the outcome mostly if not entirely depends upon the extent to which they are allowed or constrained to develop, or the reverse. Here we often see the absolutely limiting influence of "atavism," or what is characterized as "reversion," to generations further removed than the parental, but which really is the result of an exaggeration or a stoppage, or a perversion of development before the stage of parental dominance is finally reached. In this way the featural and mental characteristics of relatives as far removed as great-grandparents or great-granduncles, as well as grandparents and uncles, are seen to appear in children even when young, to be finally either accentuated and made prominent, or else possibly outgrown or otherwise overcome as the years go by, and as the later parental determining powers and the corresponding environment come to manifest their influence.