It is thus easy to understand why such a rite as circumcision, though practised during many ages, should have produced little, if any, modification tending to make circumcision unnecessary. On the view here supported such modification would be more surprising than not, for unless the impression made upon the parent was of a grave character—and probably unless also aggravated by subsequent confusion of memories in the cells surrounding the part originally impressed—the parent himself would not be sufficiently impressed to prevent him from reproducing himself, as he had already done upon an infinite number of past occasions. The child, therefore, in the womb would do what the father in the womb had done before him, nor should any trace of memory concerning circumcision be expected till the eighth day after birth, when, but for the fact that the impression in this case is forgotten almost as soon as made, some slight presentiment of coming discomfort might, after a large number of generations, perhaps be looked for as a general rule. It would not, however, be surprising, that the effect of circumcision should be occasionally inherited, and it would appear as though this was sometimes actually the case. The question should turn upon whether the disuse of an organ has arisen:— 1. From an internal desire on the part of the creature disusing it, to be quit of an organ which it finds troublesome. 2. From changed conditions and habits which render the organ no longer necessary, or which lead the creature to lay greater stress on certain other organs or modifications. 3. From the wish of others outside itself; the effect produced in this case being perhaps neither very good nor very bad for the individual, and resulting in no grave impression upon the organism as a whole. 4. From a single deep impression on a parent, affecting both himself as a whole, and gravely confusing the memories of the cells to be reproduced, or his memories in respect of those cells—according as one adopts Pangenesis and supposes a memory to “run” each gemmule, or as one supposes one memory to “run” the whole impregnate ovum—a compromise between these two views being nevertheless perhaps possible, inasmuch as the combined memories of all the cells may possibly _be_ the memory which “runs” the impregnate ovum, just as we _are_ ourselves the combination of all our cells, each one of which is both autonomous, and also takes its share in the central government. But within the limits of this volume it is absolutely impossible for me to go into this question. In the first case—under which some instances which belong more strictly to the fourth would sometimes, but rarely, come—the organ should soon go, and sooner or later leave no rudiment, though still perhaps to be found crossing the life of the embryo, and then disappearing. In the second it should go more slowly, and leave, it may be, a rudimentary structure.