Considerations with regard to Hereditary Influence

Although the axiom ex nihilo nihil fit may unquestionably in strict logic be pronounced to be a pure assumption, for as much as it is not impossible that an enlarged experience may sometime furnish us with an instantia contradictoria, yet it is plainly necessary within the compass of human knowledge to consider it an established truth. Within human ken there is, indeed, no beginning, no end; the past is developed in the present, and the present in the prediction of the future; cause produces effect, and effect in its turn becomes cause. Dust is man, and to dust he returns; the individual passes away, but that out of which he is created does not pass away. The decomposition of one compound is the production of another, and death is an entrance into a new being. This is no new truth, although modern science is now for the first time making good use of it; the earlier Grecian philosophers distinctly recognised it, and it has many times been plainly enunciated since their time. “All things,” said Empedocles, “are but a mingling and a separation of the mingled, which are called birth and death by ignorant mortals.” Plato expressed himself in like manner; and the plain statement of the truth was one of the heresies of the unfortunate Giordano Bruno. The imagination of Shakspeare, faithful to the scientific fact, traces the noble dust of Alexander till it is found stopping a bung-hole, and follows imperious Caesar till he patches a hole to keep the wind away. The immortality of matter and of force is an evident necessity of human thought.