Intermarriage, or, How and why beauty, health and intellect result from certain unions, and deformity, disease and insanity from others / by Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Intermarriage, or, How and why beauty, health and intellect result from certain unions, and deformity, disease and insanity from others / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    inches, and the long thread is very slender. A glutinous fluid is emitted, into which the globules of pollen fall and explode ; this fluid is re-absorbed by the plant ; and the seed acquires its proper organization and powers. The transmission of an organized body through the long slender thread above described, appears an awkward process, dissimilar to those usually employed by nature ; and I conceive that when a plant or animal is the offspring of two male parents, the female parent must give the first organized body. I cannot avoid believing that this is done in the eggs of birds and spawn of fish and insects. The liquid of the male silkworm operates upon the eggs after being laid.-’ With these views, of the first organization being given by the female, and life being given by the male, Mr. Knight very beautifully says, “ Were I to be born again, I should wish to descend, as I do on my mother’s side, from a healthy race, whose station in society had been through many generations, a little above that of peasants, and from a father whose mind, as that of his ancestry, had been much exercised in arguments of various kinds.” First, then, it appears to me that the making of life an essence, a thing per se, a sort of unnecessary second soul, is not in the spirit of advancing philosophy. It is in the same spirit, indeed, that some speak of the matter of electricity, the matter of galvanism ; but I think I refuted that notion, above twenty years ago, in Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, by showing that these are merely the actions of well-known elements—those namely of atmospheric air and of water. Life is not a thing, but merely a general term, expressing the aggregate of the actions of the tubular organs of plants and animals. In reproduction, therefore, there is nothing to be e-iven exciusivelv either by the male or the female. The first act of life in the new being is apparently the result of the mutual relation and influence of the otherwise inactive things or molecules given by each. One molecule with opposite poles may attract the corresponding poles of another; a ring may