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Hereditary Genius
375
shows, and lectures, that every one has become more or less familiar
with its processes. The milt taken from the male is allowed to fall
upon the ova that have been deposited by the female, which
thereupon rapidly change their appearance, and gradually, without
any other agency, an embryo fish may be observed to develop itself
inside each of them. The ova may have been separated for many
days from the female, the milt for many hours from the male. They
are, therefore, entirely detached portions of organized matter, leading
their own separate organic existences; and at the instant or very
shortly after they touch, the foundations are laid of an individual life.
But where was that life during the long interval of separation of the
milt and roe from the parent fish? If these substances were
possessed of conscious lives in the interim, then two lives will have
been merged into one “individuality “by the process; which is a direct
contradiction in terms. If neither had conscious lives, then
consciousness was produced by an operation as much under human
control as anything can be. It may not be said that the ovum was
always alive, and the milt had merely an accessory influence,
because the young fish inherits its character from its parents equally,
and there is an abundance of other physiological data to disprove the
idea. Therefore so far as fish are concerned, the creation of a new
life is as unrestrictedly within the compass of human power, as the
creation of any material product whatever, from the combination of
given elements.
Again, suppose the breeder of fish to have two kinds of milt,
belonging to salmon of different characters, each in a separate cup, A
and B, and two sorts of ova, each also in a separate cup, C and D.
Then he can make at his option the fish AC and BD, or else the fish
AD and BC. Therefore not only the creation of the lives of fish, in a
general sense, but also the specific character of individual lives,
within wide limits, is unrestrictedly under
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