Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/334

 CHAPTER XLIII.

ON HEREDITY.

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