Ingénue

“ The word "regeneration" has therefore in biology "come to mean, in general usage, not only the replacement of a lost part, but also the development of a new whole organism, or even a part of an organism, from a piece of an adult, or of an embryo, or of an egg." ”

“ But the work is also significant in its espousal of epigenesis, and, supported as his argument was by observation and logic, it became the prime formulation of that concept of development during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His statement of epigenetic development is clear:
In the egg ... there is no distinct part or prepared matter present, from which the fetus is formed ... an animal which is created by epigenesis attracts, prepares, elaborates, and makes use of the material, all at the same time; the processes of formation and growth are simultaneous ... ”

“ For as the pullet, engendered of an egg, is indebted to that egg for his body, vitality, and principal or generative part, so and in like manner does the egg receive all that is in it from the female, the female in her turn being dependent on the male for her fecundity which is conferred in coition.
And here we have an opportunity of inquiring, whether the male be the first and principal cause of the generation of the offspring; or whether the male along with the female are the mediate and instrumental causes of nature itself, or of the first and supreme generator? ”

“ And so in like manner is a conception the fruit of the intercourse of male and female, and the seed of the future embryo; it therefore does not differ from an egg.
“But that which proceeds from the generant is the cause which first obtains the principle of generation, (i. e. it is the efficient cause,) and ought to be called the geniture,” [332] not the seed, as is commonly done both by the vulgar and philosophers at the present time ”

“ How, for example, in this very matter of comparative embryological development on the hypothesis of descent of all the species of the vertebrate animals from a common ancestral stock of a different type, are we to account for the fact that the embryo of any one of the descended species has come to be developed in a mode peculiar to itself and differing from the mode in which the embryo of the ancestral stock was developed? ”

“ In sexual (digenic) reproduction the formation of the germ cell is brought about by the union in equal parts of both parental idioplasms. The offspring is the organism resulting from the union of the force and matter of the parents, and represents in its nature the united continuation of their ontogenies. The characteristics of development of the child depend however on the viability of the determinants of the mingled idioplasms in which a new equilibrium has been formed. ”

“ While the development of an embryo follows in a rude way the phyletic metamorphoses passed through by its ancestry, the order of development of organs is often gradually modified by the needs of particular species: the structures being developed in such order as conduces to self-sustentation and the welfare of offspring. ”

“ One hesitates to put “Roger and Angelique” upon this list, for though the female figure shows the finest qualities of Ingres’s work,—deep study of nature in her purest forms, perfect sincerity of intention and power of mastering an ideal conception—yet side by side with these the effigy of Roger on his hippogriff bears witness that from the passionless point of view, which was Ingres’s birthright, the weird creatures of the fancy cannot be seen. ”

“ In propagation characterized by unlikeness of the successive generations, there is asexual genesis with occasionally-recurring sexual genesis; in other words—agamogenesis interrupted more or less frequently by gamogenesis. If we set out with a generation of perfect males and females, then, from their ova arise individuals which are neither males nor females, but which produce the next generation from buds. By this method of multiplication many individuals originate from a single fertilized germ. The product of development is organized round more than one centre or axis. ”

“ For a moment it seemed to me that a soul was speaking from the eyes and frame of ’Gene, and that, regardless of differences of language and all the traditional barriers that separated him from the multitude about him, they understood and believed all he said. ”

“ The variations in development, to which we here refer, take their origin in the germ-plasm which tends to repeat in each generation similar types of development. In other words the germ-plasm from which individuals spring is of such a nature that the embryos arising from it show in their development a recapitulation of the evolution of their particular species. ”

“ I will not deny that each was created,—was called suddenly out of non-entity into entity; but I believe, or at least I choose to believe,—that each was created in the simplest form in which it can exist; as the seed, the gemmule, the ovum, the—ahem!"
Pray go on! you were about to say "the infant," or "the fœtus," or "the embryo," probably; pray make your selection: which will you say?
"Well, I hardly know. Because, if I choose the new-born infant, you will say, Its condition implies a nine months' pre-existence, certainly ”

“ This living filament from the father is also liable to have its propensities, or appetencies, altered at the time of its production by the imagination of the male parent; the extremities of the seminal glands imitating the motions of the organs of sense; and thus the sex of the embryon is produced; which may be thus made a male or a female by affecting the imagination of the father at the time of impregnation. ”

“ While such development, so far as known to science, is always abortive, and while, as Washington Irving remarks, the ingenious maiden who to-day would attribute conception to any other cause than sexual congress would find it difficult to overcome the prejudice of scientists, yet embryology, while declaring immaculate generation improbable, does not pronounce it impossible. A worker bee may be an offspring of an unimpregnated queen bee. ”

“ Entelechy has ruled the individual morphogenesis of the generation which is regarded as being the starting-point for inheritance, and will rule also the morphogenesis of the generation which is to follow; entelechy determines the egg to be what it is, and the morphogenesis starting from this egg to be what it is also. ”

“ She lieth under. Hear him; he shall save
A seed alive, and sow the earth with man.
O, earth! earth! earth! a floating shell of wood
Shall hold the remnant of thy mighty lords
Will this old man be in it? Sir, and you
My daughters, hear him! Lo, this white old man
He sitteth on the ground. (Let be, let be:
Why dost Thou trouble us to make our tongue
Ring with abhorred words?) ”

“ But we shall immediately see that a law of an unknown nature apparently exists, which leads to the offspring from unions, which are infertile, being themselves more or less infertile; and this at present is all that can be said.
SEVENTHLY. Hybrids and mongrels present, with the one great exception of fertility, the most striking accordance in all other respects; namely, in the laws of their resemblance to their two parents, in their tendency to reversion, in their variability, and in being absorbed through repeated crosses by either parent- form. ”

“ Deep in the yew-tree's trunk beside his own.
For none could carve like me, and here they stand.
Fathers and mothers of this present race:
And underscored by some less practised hand,
That fain the story of its line would trace,
With children's names, and number, and the day
When any called to God have passed away. ”

“ Like all contributions to the sum of social ideas, eugenics must work by the successive steps of invention, generalization and tradition, corresponding to the biological processes of variation, survival of the fittest and heredity. Invention, or discovery of the laws of eugenics, is here the part of the laboratory specialist, and should loom high in the attention of the sociologists of this generation. ”

“ While admitting that generation, sexual or asexual, is the mode of reproduction found among animals possessed of complex structure, the partisans of spontaneous generation held, on the strength of their experiments, that certain very low organisms might be developed spontaneously, without specific germs, in infusions of organic substances. ”

“ Even today we find in a vague way both these theories held by educated persons.
We are indebted to Harvey in the early part of the eighteenth century for advocating the view held [104] by Aristotle, now known as Epigenesis, and combatting the view of growth from a miniature, but already perfectly formed animal, to a visible one. Epigenesis consists in the successive differentiation from the relatively homogeneous elements as found in the egg, to the complicated parts and structure as seen in the offspring. ”

“ According to this, the completed being repeats in the course of its development the history of the race, that is to say, the varying phases of foetal development from the single cell in which it originates up to the perfect being of the special type as it is born into the world, retrace the history by which from the single cell being the creature in question has gradually developed. ”

“ Just as the naturalist may see in the fully developed organ of an animal the evolutionary product of the embryo which existed in that animal's remote ancestor thousands of years ago, so will the Chinese scholar recognise in a fan or trinket the descendant, degenerate enough, perhaps, but still legitimate, of some forgotten progenitor of the past. ”

“ It is obvious that of our total characteristics some are acquired and some are inherited, and the question then arises, How much is inherited in an embryo or individual, and therefore unavoidable, and how much acquired? ”

“ The innate ability is handed down from generation to generation, and, in so far as it contributes to success, is fostered and developed by selection; and the modifications of behaviour to which it leads, since the results of prior process in the parent persist as the basis and starting-point of subsequent process in the offspring may in a sense also be said to be handed down. ”

“ From all these analogies I conclude, that the embryon is produced solely by the male, and that the female supplies it with a proper nidus, with sustenance, and with oxygenation; and that the idea of the semen of the male constituting only a stimulus to the egg of the female, exciting it into life, (as held by some philosophers) has no support from experiment or analogy. ”

“ The Hundred Rolls furnish us with a ‘William le Engynur’ and a ‘Walter le Ginnur;’ the Inquisitiones with a ‘Richard le Enginer,’ and the Writs with a ‘William le Genour.’ The descendants of such as these are, of course, our ‘Gunners,’ ‘Ginners,’ ‘Jenour,’ and ‘Jenners,’ [225] the last of which are now represented by one who is as renowned for recovering as his ancestor in days gone 230by would be for destroying life. Our ‘Gunns’ and ‘Ginns’ also must be referred to the same source. In one of the records just alluded to a ‘Warin Engaine’ is to be met with. ”

“ That injuries incurred during life are but seldom transmitted to the offspring does not appear to me wonderful: the inheritance of the complete form and complete activities of the organism, which took root such enormously long periods of time ago, and has been strengthened at each generation, will, as a rule, counterbalance in the offspring any such injuries incurred only once and not repeated. ”

“ In a former work on the evolution of morality I have described the manner in which the hereditary tendencies and instincts arise from habit, induced in the nervous cellules by a sufficient repetition of the same acts. The instinct of procreation has, and can have, no other origin. The animal species, during the long phases of their evolution, have reproduced themselves unconsciously, and by very simple processes, which we may still observe in certain zoophytes. ”

“ To sum up, there are so many features of natural selection, each of which must be separately weighed and the whole then balanced, that it is a matter of extensive inquiry to determine whether a certain war has a preponderance of eugenic or dysgenic results. ”

“ In one account they are created male and female, and apparently at the same time. In the next account, Adam is made first, and Eve a long time afterwards, and from a part of the man. Did God simply by his creative fiat cause a rib slowly to expand, grow and divide into nerve, ligament, cartilage and flesh? How was the woman created from a rib? How was man created simply from dust? ”

“ From the hereditary nature of all characteristics, whether good or bad, we learn the importance of having all desirable qualities thoroughly inbred; or, in other words, so firmly in each generation that the next is warrantably certain to present nothing worse—that no ill results follow from breeding back to some inferior ancestor—that all undesirable traits or points be, so far as possible, bred-out. ”

“ But the essence of the problem lies in the question, Why does one of these simple cells become a cabbage, another a rat, another a whale, another a man? Within the limits of known observation during historic time, every organism yields seed or bears progeny after its own kind. ”

“ If in any progeny certain traits not belonging to the sire, but belonging to a sire of preceding progeny, are reproduced, how is it that such anomalously inherited traits are not observed in domestic animals, and indeed in mankind? ”