litter had been cut out of her belly crept up to them dying, caressed them, and began to whine violently only when they were taken from her (Burdach, _Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft_, vol. ii. and iii.). Chapter XLIII. On Heredity. The most ordinary experience teaches that in generation the combined seed of the parents not only propagates the peculiarities of the species, but also those of the individual, as far as bodily (objective, external) qualities are concerned, and this has also always been recognised— “_Naturæ sequitur semina quisque suæ._” —CATULL. Now whether this also holds good of mental (subjective, internal) qualities, so that these also are transmitted by the parents to the children, is a question which has already often been raised, and almost always answered in the affirmative. More difficult, however, is the problem whether it is possible to distinguish what belongs to the father and what to the mother, thus what is the mental inheritance which we receive from each of our parents. If now we cast upon this problem the light of our fundamental knowledge that the will is the true being, the kernel, the radical element in man, and the intellect, on the other hand, is what is secondary, adventitious, the accident of that substance; before questioning experience we will assume it as at least probable that the father, as _sexus potior_ and the procreative principle, imparts the basis, the radical element, of the new life, thus the _will_, and the mother, as _sexus sequior_ and merely conceiving principle, imparts the secondary element, the _intellect_; that thus the man inherits his moral nature, his character, his inclinations, his heart, from the father, and, on the other hand, the grade, quality, and tendency of his intelligence from the mother. Now this assumption actually finds its confirmation in experience; only this cannot be decided by a physical experiment upon the table, but results partly from the careful and acute observation of many years, and partly from history.