of the family, otherwise how are we to account for the appearance of
ancestral peculiarities which the father and mother do not show?
Moreover, since very minute things, like the inner angle of the eyebrow,
may independently vary, there must be an enormous number of seeds apart
altogether from the considerations alluded to in the last paragraph. And
many authorities who have closely considered the question have come to
the conclusion that the complexities introduced would be so great that
it is impossible to believe in any micromeristic theory.

Then, of course, we must look out for some other explanation, and some
have suggested that it is to be found in memory--the memory of the germ
of what it was once part and the anticipation of what it may once more
be. This again is an explanation not susceptible of proof along the
lines of a chemical experiment, but not necessarily, therefore, untrue.
Of course there are two ideas as to memory. If we are pure materialists
and imagine every memory in our possession as something stamped, in some
wholly incomprehensible manner, on some cell of our brain and looked at
there, by some wholly inconceivable agency, when we sit down to think of
past days, then we must look on the germ, under the "mnemic" or memory
theory as consisting of fragments each of them impressed with the
"memory" of some particular organ or feature of the body, and lo! we
find ourselves back again in micromerism. If we are to take a
non-materialistic view of memory we are plunged into a metaphysical
discussion which cannot here be pursued. A third explanation, which by
the way explains nothing, is that the whole matter is one of
"arrangement," to which we shall return at the close of this paper.

The mechanism of inheritance must either be physical[33] or it must be
non-physical; that is, immaterial. This is what emerges from our
discussion, and so far as science goes to-day it must be admitted that
neither of these explanations can be said to be accepted generally by
men of science or proved--perhaps even capable of proof--by scientific
methods. If we know little or nothing about the mechanism of
inheritance, can we and do we know anything about the laws under which
it works, or has it any laws? Or are its operations a mere
chance-medley? It is hardly necessary to ask the latter question, for
chance-medley could not lead to regular operations--operations so
regular that a court of law may act upon their evidence