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Only the very rare occurrence of instances of atavism in varieties that are for the rest known to be absolutely constant, is to be considered. Atavism or reversion is the falling back to a prototype. But what is a prototype? We may take the word in a physiologic or in a systematic sense.
To that tendency a special name is given it is called 'Atavism', it expresses this tendency to revert to the ancestral type, and comes from the Latin word 'atavus', ancestor.
'They take all that philosophically, he used to say. "Please accept, Sir, with renewed acknowledgements of gratitude, the expression of my most distinguished sentiments. "P. S. As to the question of atavism in which you showed some interest in our first conversation, I may say that our paternal line does not in my knowledge include any military man.
While the relative thinness of the infant's sole might be pointed to as the effect of disuse during a long series of generations, its thickness is rather an illustration of atavism still resisting the effects of long-continued disuse.
"In the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should, or should not, affright her.
If we are surrendered in love to the purposes of the Spirit, we are committed to the bringing out of the best possible in life; and this is a hard business, involving a quite definite social struggle with evil and atavism, in which some one is likely to be hurt.
There is, however, no real atavism involved. Die Gotterdammerung, though the last of The Ring dramas in order of performance, was the first in order of conception and was indeed the root from which all the others sprang. The history of the matter is as follows. All Wagner's works prior to The Ring are operas. The last of them, Lohengrin, is perhaps the best known of modern operas.
How could a factor which seems to be totally inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the normal effects of use and disuse, suddenly become so powerful as to completely overthrow atavism, and its own tendency to transmit the non-mutilated type of one of the parents and of the non-mutilated type presented by the injured parent in earlier life?
To this form of atavism pertain, on the basis of our definition, those phenomena by which species assume one or more characters of allies, from which they are understood to have descended by the loss of the character under discussion.
This was the way with all men at that time, but it was rough on recruits. So my friend Carter Johnson wore through some years, rose to be a corporal, finally a sergeant, and did many daring deeds. An atavism from "the old border riders" of Scotland shone through the boy, and he took on quickly. He could act the others off the stage and sing them out of the theatre in his chosen profession.
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