Thirdly, I think that the reciprocated love of two sometimes creates a _new soul_. We are familiar with the idea that the love (sexual) of two bodies commonly creates a new body; and there is an age-long tradition that the same is true in the world of souls. There is in that world also, not only regeneration but generation. “Love is the desire of generation in the beautiful, both _with relation to the soul and the body_,” says Plato;[134] and Ellen Key, in a passage already quoted above (ch. iv., p. 61), says that “two beings _through_ one another may become a new being, and a greater than either could be of itself alone.” By love a new soul is sometimes generated which takes possession of both persons, and which suggests—as in the Swedenborg phrase above—that in some other sphere they really become one. And by love, we may also think, between man and wife, a new soul or soul-bud is sometimes created, which may descend into and vivify the physical germ of their future child. To consider this last point a moment. The connection between heredity and the individual self is very mysterious. We acknowledge our descent, and what we owe, both mentally and bodily, to our parentage; but we are fain to think of our _ego_ as something apart, something not to be confused with parents, and by no means merely derivative from them. Sometimes indeed there is great harmony between this _ego_ and the parental inheritance, sometimes much the reverse; sometimes the line between the two is doubtful and uncertain. What is the explanation of all this? and what are the true facts of the relationship? Does it not seem likely that, in the intense organic excitement which attends sexual union, this excitement—especially if strong love be also present—reaches right down into the soul-depths of each person, stirring these also, and the race oversoul at that point, most profoundly? So that, at the same moment that the germ of a bodily child is being fertilized, there is formed in the race-soul a soul-bud corresponding, which consequently descends into the physical germ and becomes its organizing life—the soul-bud thus being related to the souls of the parents, somewhat as the physical germ is related to their bodies? It springs, in fact, from a related portion of the race-oversoul.