Thus an individual may inherit or may have inherent in the germ-cells from which he was formed characters which were not present in either parent. They were, however, potentially present in the germ-cells of which those parents were the trustees. But, the reader will say, do we find in the case of every “sport” or “transilient variation,” such as Shakespeare, that the new character was, after all, present in some one or other of his ancestors though absent in his immediate parents? The answer is negative, certainly. But genius, to take this case, is a combination of qualities. And the Mendelians are now able to call into existence organisms of new kinds by combination of qualities derived from one parent, or rather from one parental line, with other qualities, formerly apparently incompatible with them derived from the other parental line. Thus Professor Biffen of Cambridge has called into existence a new kind of wheat such as never existed before--a wheat combining the quality technically called “strength,” hitherto lacking in all kinds of wheat capable of being profitably grown in Great Britain, with the power of yielding a large crop and other good qualities found in home-grown wheat. He has also produced a wheat which, together with other desirable qualities, is immune from the disease known as “rust,” this immunity having never been found before associated with the other good qualities in question. These advances will not long be limited to the vegetable world merely. Perhaps it requires no very great imagination, after all, to suppose that even something like that combination of qualities which we call genius may some day be produced at will in mankind. Such a new wheat, then,--I will not say such a Shakespeare--owes its unique and unprecedented properties to heredity, and yet there was never anything like it before. Its “genius” is not “hereditary.” The words _innate_ and _inborn_ are harmless and may be employed, though the apparent emphasis on birth is rather unfortunate. We mean, however, by innate or inborn qualities, qualities which were potential in the germ. The genius of Shakespeare was innate or inborn. It was present potentially at his real birth, the union of the parental cells. It preceded his “birth” in the ordinary sense of the word: Shakespeare, when only _in embryo_, was a Shakespeare _in embryo_. Better still is the word _inherent_, which, of course, literally means “sticking in.” By anything inherent we mean that which was there from the first as part and parcel of, as indeed essential to, the entity to which we refer. Now inherent characters are always inherited in the accurate sense that they inhere in the germ-cells, which are the inherited material. As these germ-cells make us or as we are made out of them, it follows, of course, that all our potentialities whatsoever, our ultimate fates in every particular, partly depend upon inheritance.[30]