He ceases to rock. He reels from the porch, He runs and stumbles to reach the road. He yells and curses and tears his hair. He staggers and falls and rises and runs. And Widow La Rue With the eyes of Clytemnestra Stands at the window and watches him Running and tearing his hair.
She seems so calm when the daughter returns. She only says: "He has gone to the meadow, He will soon be back. ..." But he never came back.
And the years went on till the daughter's hair Was white as her mother's there in the grave. She was known as the bride whom the bridegroom left And didn't say good-bye.
I lectured last upon the morbus sacer, Or falling sickness, epilepsy, of old In Palestine and Greece so much ascribed To deities or devils. To resume We find it caused by morphological Changes of the cortex cells. Sometimes, More times, indeed, the anatomical Basis, if one be, escapes detection. For many functions of the cortex are Unknown, as I have said.
And now remember Mercier's analysis of heredity: Besides direct transmission of unstable Nervous systems, there remains the law Hereditary of sanguinity. Then here's another matter: Parents may Have normal nervous systems, yet produce Children of abnormal nerves and minds, Caused by unsuitable sexual germs. Let me repeat before I leave the matter The factors in a perfect organization: First quality in the germ producing matter; Then quality in the sperm producing force, And lastly relative fitness of the two. We are but plants, however high we rise, Whatever thoughts we have, or dreams we dream We are but plants, and all we are and do Depends upon the seed and on the soil. What Mendel found in raising peas may lead To perfect knowledge of the human mind. There is one law for men and peas, the law Makes peas of certain matter, and makes men And mind of certain matter, all depends Not on a varying law, but on a law Varied in its course by matter, as The arm, which is a lever and which works By lever principle cannot make use And form cement with trowel to the forms It makes of paint or marble.
To resume: A child may take the qualities of one parent In some respects, and of the other parent In some respects. A child may have the traits Of father at one period of his life, The mother at one period of his life. And if the parents' traits are similar Their traits may be prepotent in a child, Thus giving rise to qualities convergent. So if you take a circle and draw off A line which would become another circle If drawn enough, completed, but is left Half drawn or less, that illustrates a mind Of cumulative heredity. Take John, My gardener, John, within his sphere is perfect, John has a mind which is a perfect circle. A perfect circle can be small, you know. And so John has good sense within his sphere. But if some force began to work like yeast In brain cells, and his mind shot forth a line To make a larger thinking circle, say About a great invention, heaven or God, Then John would be abnormal, till this line Shot round and joined, became a larger circle. This is the secret of eccentric genius, The man is half a sphere, sticks out in space Does not enclose co-ordinated thought. He's like a plant mutating, half himself Half something new and greater. If we looked To John's heredity we'd find this change Was manifest in mother or in father About the self-same period of life, Most likely in his father. Attributes Of fathers are inherited by sons, Of mothers by the daughters.