Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/836

814 met with skepticism and even ridicule on the part of scientific men, only to be vindicated finally by more thorough and exact knowledge. It is too often the case that, where the processes are recondite and difficult to follow, assumption passes for knowledge. The function of some of our own bodily organs yet remains to be established, and we probably assume too much in requiring that all nervous force must be transferred through nerve tissue, or that there may not be protoplasmic filaments which are not resolvable, in their finer ramifications, even with our best microscopes. The very nature of mind and its processes puts it beyond the reach of the scalpel of the anatomist or the physiologist, just as many psychical phenomena baffle the exact methods of science, at least those so far employed. Leaving out of the question the evidence of peculiar marks due to maternal emotion, cases of which are part of the unwritten history of almost every family, the striking cases of which I have authoritative evidence of addition to, subtraction from, or singular modification of, anatomical parts, confirm me in the belief that this is a most important psycho-physiological cause of modification.

In the romance of "Elsie Venner," in which the heroine's strange attributes are connected with pre-natal influence of the mother, who died of the bite of Crotalus, Oliver Wendell Holmes has strongly put forth this doctrine in the form of fiction. I allude to this clever romance because of the medical knowledge of the eminent author, and because, while admitting in the preface that a grave scientific doctrine lies beneath some of the delineations of character, he also affirms that he has had the most startling confirmation of its truth. The data collected on the subject I hope to bring together on some other more fit occasion; and I would take this opportunity of urging any in my hearing, or who may read these lines, if they have had or are aware of any authoritative and illustrative cases, to communicate them to me with as much detail as possible.

This theory once established, its bearing on evolution as a prime cause of variation must at once be manifest; for it gives not only tangibility to the Lamarckian idea of desire influencing modification, but also a conception of how Infinite Mind in nature may act through the finite in directing such modification. No doubt but that there is a great deal of nonsense and superstition mixed with the genuine, and that the idea that every little whim, or fancy, or imagining of the mother will produce record or mark is one of the unjustified outcroppings of the fundamental fact, and helps to explain the difficulty of getting at the real facts and the ease with which Darwin rejected the idea. In my judgment, this factor acts only when, from whatever cause, and particularly under the spur of necessity, the emotions are exceptionally