On the level of sensation, where the obscure rudiments of will, understanding, and sentiment commence, this life giving Power creates the world of animals. And so, on the still higher level of reason and its concomitants, it creates the world of men. In a word, the great general fact is that an unknown Power call it what we may, Nature, Vital Force, or God creates, on the various planes of its exercise, different families of organized beings. Secondly, a more special fact is, that when we have overleaped the mystery of a commencement, every being yields seed according to its kind, wherefrom, when properly conditioned, its species is perpetuated. How much, now, does this second fact imply? It is by adding to the observed phenomena an indefensible hypothesis that the error of traduction is obtained. We observe that human beings are begotten by a deposit of germs through the generative process. To affirm that these germs are transmitted down the generations from the original progenitor of each race, in whom they all existed at first, is an unwarranted assertion and involves absurdities. It is refuted both by Geoffrey St. Hilaire's famous experiments on eggs, and by the crossing of species.12 In opposition to this theological figment, observation and science require the belief that each being is endowed independently with a germ forming power. Organic life requires three things: a fruitful germ; a quickening impulse; a nourishing medium. Science plainly shows us that this primal nucleus is given, in the human species, by the union of the contents of a sperm cell with those of a germ cell; that this dynamic start is imparted from the life force of the parents; and that this feeding environment is 11 Tract on the Origin and Propagation of the Soul, chap. i. 12 Flourens, Amount of Life on the Globe, part ii. ch. iii. sect. ii. furnished by the circle of co ordinated relations. That the formative power of the new organism comes from, or at least is wholly conditioned by, the parent organism, should be believed, because it is the obvious conclusion, against which there is nothing to militate. That the soul of the child comes in some way from the soul of the parent, or is stamped by it, is also implied by the normal resemblance of children to parents, not more in bodily form than in spiritual idiosyncrasies. This fact alone furnishes the proper qualification to the acute and significant lines of the Platonizing poet: "Wherefore who thinks from souls new souls to bring, The same let presse the sunne beames in his fist And squeeze out drops of light, or strongly wring The rainbow till it die his hands, well prest."