The chromosomes transmit the physical bases of heredity from one generation to the next, and the heritages from the two parents are equal except in cases of prepotency. Every cell {71} in the human body is derived from the father and the mother equally. The fact that the woman carries a child for months in her womb means only that she employs a peculiar method of feeding and protecting it. After its birth she feeds it from her breasts, before birth through its umbilical vessels, but she originally gives only the eight chromosomes as the father does, and the child's vital principle builds up the body from this foundation. The popular notion that the foetus in the womb is formed through some process of literal abstraction from the maternal tissues is no more true than that the infant is so built up while it is suckling; both processes are merely different methods of feeding. All the chromosomes from the fathers of at least 200 men could fit simultaneously on the head of one pin, yet virtually, not merely potentially, half the bodily substance of that multitude, and all the physical characteristics derived from the 200 fathers, are indubitably contained in those chromosomes and nowhere else, unless by a special creation they are infused with the new soul, which seems to be an altogether unreasonable alternative. This statement concerning the minuteness of the chromosomes is not speculation--they can readily be seen and measured with the aid of the microscope. A human being, then, obtains eight microscopic chromosomes from his father and eight from his mother, positively nothing more except food; yet he develops into a man with a body made up of countless millions of cells which expand into more than 200 bones in the skeleton and over 200 muscles,--into the fascias, ligaments, tendons, the great and small glands, the lymph and blood systems, the respiratory and alimentary tracts, the skin and its appendages, and a nervous system, which alone furnishes material for years of study if we would learn its anatomy fully. Not only all this, but the man commonly closely resembles his father or his mother, or some other ancestor, in personal appearance, in certain physical tendencies, in graces or blemishes; and furthermore, he shows inherited racial characteristics.