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To the thoughtful reader to whom these papers appeal, to the reader whose mind is of the modern cast, who has surveyed the vistas of the geological record and grasped the secular unfolding of the scheme of life, who has found with microscope and scalpel that the same rhythm of birth and re-birth is woven into the minutest texture of things that has covered the earth with verdure and shaped the massifs of the Alps, to such a man the whole literature the world produced until the nineteenth century had well progressed, must needs be lacking in any definite and pervading sense of the cardinal importance in the world of this central reproductive aspect, of births and of the training and preparation for future births.
Several reasons make me believe in this; but the chief one is the remarkable effect which confinement or cultivation has on the function of the reproductive system; this system appearing to be far more susceptible than any other part of the organisation, to the action of any change in the conditions of life.
Another writer substantially endorses this by the remark that "in a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct." How easily one glides into the other very little observation of life or study of history will show. The language of devotion and of amatory passion is often identical, and seems to serve equally well for either purpose.
We might hesitate to use the word "altruistic" in describing the self-destructive reproductive act of an Amoeba, because this word connotes some degree of consciousness of the existence of other than personal interests, and of the welfare of different individuals. There is no reason to believe that such conscious recognition of any natural duties is possible in the case of so low an organism.
In turn, the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an inferior. Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth.
The hump-back, taken in salt water about Seattle, shows the same peculiarities. The male is slab-sided, hook-billed, and distorted, and is rejected by the canners. No hook-jawed females of any species have been seen. It is not positively known that any hook-jawed male survives the reproductive act. If any do, their jaws must resume the normal form.
Neither is it probable, in an age in which nothing that is natural was considered indecent, and before the reproductive energies had become degraded, that these symbols were any more suggestive of impurity than are the Easter offerings upon our church altars at the present time.
On the other hand, these cases clearly show that the capacity for crossing is connected with constitutional differences imperceptible by us, and confined to the reproductive system. This difference in the result of reciprocal crosses between the same two species was long ago observed by Kolreuter.
No more need be said here of the reproductive image, as it is synonymous with the memory image and was therefore treated fully under the topic of memory. One fact should be borne in mind, however, and that is, that the creative image is to some extent dependent on the reproductive image as it involves recall.
For it bears on the view which I have taken of one of the causes of ordinary variability; namely, that the reproductive system, from being eminently sensitive to changed conditions of life, fails under these circumstances to perform its proper function of producing offspring closely similar in all respects to the parent-form.
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