£*•

IMPREGNATION. 169
mitit. All the grand and energetic qualities that made
a Caesar or a Napoleon—all that can be fairly attributed
to blood and birth, to hereditary influences, must have
been contained in one or both these atoms.
I do not underrate the influences that may act upon
the foetus during gestation. I give full credit to the
power of education in forming the human character;
and I shall speak of both these influences ; but I assert
that all which makes the basis of the character, mental
and physical, must reside in the germ and the spermatazoon,
and must combine at the moment of impreg
nation, or the union of these principles.
For, observe, all the qualities of soul and body, which
make the specific differences between a mouse, a dog,
a horse, an elephant, must be in their germinal princi
in different
ples. The appearance of the zoosperms
animals varies slightly under the —that microscope of
the ova scarcely at all. Moreover, when two nearly
allied species of animals engender ; when, for example,
the zoosperm of the ass unites with the ovum of the
mare, each parent is found to contribute to the mental
and physical qualities of the offspring. In all cross
ings
of different breeds of animals, we find the same
effects produced, the more powerful impressing them
selves most strongly, and the two sexes giving each cer
tain peculiar characteristics.
Nor is this by any means less notably the fact in the
human species. When sexual commerce takes place
between a negro and a white woman, the offspring child
partakes of the mental and physical qualities of both;
which he has the most of, seems to depend upon
the relative power and energy of his two procreators.
15