, 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 - 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 BIOLOGY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Class 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE S^NDEMAN, M.A. 
 
 LONDON 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1896 
 
S3 
 
 BIOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 G 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume contains the criticism of the contem- 
 porary biological systems. That enquiry is necessary 
 as an introduction to the study of the problems of 
 organic life, but it is not in itself a doctrine of biology. 
 The argument ought to proceed to the discussion of 
 the philosophy of nature. 
 
 I have to thank Dr. C. M. Douglas, Dr. George R. 
 Wilson, and Mr. A. B. Macaulay, for suggestions in 
 connection with various parts of the book. 
 
 G. S. 
 
 COLINTON, October, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 I. METHODS OF BIOLOGY I 
 
 II. THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY - 46 
 
 III. THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY - 89 
 
 IV. THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY - 139 
 V. THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM - - 196 
 
OF THE 
 
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 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 THE aim of this essay is to inquire into the nature of the 
 problems which come before us in the study of animals and 
 plants, in order that we may define the right method and the 
 limits of biology, and that we may obtain some adequate 
 criterion by which to judge of the merits of the numerous 
 theories which have arisen in explanation of facts about 
 organisms. Its, method is throughout that of inquiry; and I 
 shall build up no systematic hypothesis as a solution of the 
 problems. For we shall find that such hypotheses, as are 
 most commonly used in this matter, bring with them certain 
 unavoidable disadvantages, in that they are themselves in 
 contradiction with the very possibility of research, and serve 
 rather to hide the problems than to give any satisfactory 
 account of them. And our material is two-fold ; for there 
 are the theories of biology on the one hand, and on the 
 other the records of research ; and these two sources are, 
 for the critical study of problems, equally important. 
 
 Every serious student of biology must be conscious of a 
 remarkable anarchy within the science, as well as of a certain 
 indefiniteness in its scope. These inner and outer confusions, 
 together with the complex and uncriticised meanings of 
 biological terms, supply reasons why we should supplement 
 and interpret biological theory by a critical method; and 
 that method seems to be equally necessary to any clear 
 understanding of the problems, whether the conclusions of 
 
2 . PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 the present essay are found to be true or abstract. I shall 
 describe the confusions in question, leaving the discussion 
 of the reasons for them to a later place. 
 
 When the methods and form of any science are dis- 
 cussed, the argument moves between two dangers. For it 
 is possible to lay down very close limits for the content of 
 the science, and to define its methods with a hard pedantry, 
 so that the conclusions which are based on such limitations 
 are only true of a part, and that, perhaps, not an essential 
 part, of the science. And, on the other hand, one may 
 lightly enumerate the more obvious points of its content, 
 and decorate the discussion with many apt illustrations of its 
 method, yet gain no distinct impression of the unique busi- 
 ness of the science. On the whole, I shall attempt to err 
 in neither of these directions. For the purposes of this 
 essay, biology includes the systems of explanation of the 
 forms and functions and origins of animals and plants in 
 general. For us, it is to be a science which is definitely 
 distinct from morphology, physiology, embryology, and the 
 other studies which deal with aspects, parts, and periods of 
 organisms. Biology is not to be a mere encyclopaedia of 
 facts about organisms, it is in some way to include, and yet 
 to be distinct from those other studies. It is not the science 
 of form or of function, because it is the science of the union 
 of those aspects, and of the union of morphology and phy- 
 siology with the studies of the developing individual and 
 the developing race. And since there is no need of a 
 science to include the more special sciences merely side by 
 side, the uniting action of biology is not the mere addition 
 of one of them to the others. However narrowly we define 
 the science for our present purpose, it will still include all 
 that is commonly known as biology. We have to do with 
 theories of the development of the individual, of inherit- 
 ance, and of adaptation, such as those of Lamarck, Darwin, 
 Naegeli, Weismann, and many other authors. 
 
 Now the inner confusion of biology depends on the form 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 3 
 
 of the science ; not on its necessary form, nor on its pro- 
 fessed form, but on its actual form, which is the strange 
 result of the other two. The necessary form is, as we shall 
 see, a theory of individuality. The professed form is that 
 of the induction of general laws from known facts, with the 
 interpolation, here and there, of hypothetical facts which 
 are supposed to be in the same kind, to fill the lacunce 
 which are unavoidably left by tardy research or defective 
 instruments. The actual form is a curious product of these 
 two factors, and its several features are referable to their 
 cooperation. For the great body of biological literature, 
 as distinguished from the archives of research which have 
 no theory behind them, is given to us in the form of a large 
 number of independent systems ; and the quality of that 
 independence is the source of the inner confusion. Speak- 
 ing generally, one may say that the systems are each of 
 them divided into two parts ; each includes a theory of 
 the development of the individual and a theory of the 
 progressive adaptation of the race; that is, a theory of 
 ontogeny and another of the factors of organic evolution. 
 Or in other words, each biological system has to answer 
 two questions How are the qualities of the individual re- 
 lated to one another ? And How do the qualities exist 
 by reason of their significance? Every system, at least, 
 which has achieved any fame, has given a complete account 
 of these two problems. 
 
 The systems, therefore, deal with the same matter, and 
 the same wealth of recorded research is before them. As 
 sober inductions built upon the sure ground of observation, 
 they should, one would judge, differ from one another only 
 in unimportant points. Indeed, they should so pass into 
 one another that the character of independence of systems 
 should be impossible to them. They should form one 
 body of knowledge, going ever hand in hand with research, 
 informing its method, and certainly capable of being 
 affirmed or denied by a final reference to fact. There 
 
4 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 should be no such opposition and bare exclusion of one 
 another as that to which we are accustomed. 
 
 But consider their actual form. Each of them is com- 
 plete and final, and will explain, in its own manner, every- 
 thing which is organic. Each stands over against the 
 others in the form of bare exclusion, and is hard and 
 polished in its independent perfection. And judgment 
 cannot be made between two such mutually contradictory 
 systems by the most exhaustive and ingenious test of facts. 
 There is a complete independence of one another, and an 
 almost complete independence of research. If it were not 
 so, then they would combine, and research would discrimin- 
 ate between them. There are twenty good theories of the 
 development of the individual, but I cannot say that any 
 one seems to be better or worse than all the rest. A certain 
 controversy with regard to natural selection and use in- 
 heritance lived long, and was discussed in every public 
 place and with the aid of hosts of detailed observations. 
 Vet it was never cleared up, and neither side had the 
 advantage; but because men became weary of it, it has 
 now been allowed to rest. It is not otherwise with the 
 history of biology. New systems supersede old ones, and 
 the latter are not disproved but forgotten. If this seems 
 to be a too sweeping judgment, then the archives of re- 
 search are before you, and the theories are elaborately 
 stated for every detail and exhaustively illustrated from 
 facts about organisms ; will you tell not what maintains 
 the form of the individual from day to day, for the theories 
 abstract from that consideration but what determines the 
 rise of that individual form ; whether it be the clairvoyance 
 of the unconscious, the immanent soul, the gemmules, the 
 idioplasm, the pangenes, the stirp, the physiological units, 
 or the struggle of parts ; that the palm may be given to 
 Hartmann, Stahl, Darwin, Weismann and Naegeli, de Vries, 
 Galton, Spencer, or Roux? Or perhaps some other hypo- 
 thetical agent seems to you preferable? For my part, if 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 5 
 
 the method of any one of these theories be allowed for a 
 moment, I cannot see any reason for either affirming or 
 denying any one of them. And if one of these principles 
 made my hand, I have no doubt that it made my foot also, 
 and I cannot be sure that it did not make my argument. 
 
 But it may be said that after all we have to some ex- 
 tent moved in accordance with research. Bonnet's belief 
 that the image of the adult was contained in the germ in 
 little, difference for difference, has been expelled by the 
 progress of microscopic investigation. Lamarck's cause 
 excitatrice has disappeared before physiological research. 
 And on the other hand, Weismann's idioplasm does cor- 
 respond to granules which stain with logwood, and the 
 struggle and selection of parts is certainly a fact so long as 
 the parts are in any way related to one another. That is 
 merely to say that hypothetical agents and hypothetical 
 processes disappear before research ; and that the theories 
 invent new processes and new determinant agents in as yet 
 unexplored forms. We might point out that the agents 
 which are at present in vogue are, in fact, unknown, but it 
 is better to await the more conclusive demonstration that 
 they are in necessity unknowable. These are some of the 
 features of the inner confusion. They have made the very 
 name of biology a by-word. And though the anarchy may 
 not be obvious to a people delighting in formulae which 
 may be applied with equal facility and barrenness to every- 
 thing which is organic, it is so present to men of research 
 that they leave the whole matter on one side as simply not 
 pertinent to their occupation, and are not patient to bear 
 even the mention of what they repudiate, with more justice 
 than they are always aware, as metaphysics. 
 
 The outer confusion is not less notable. I have indi- 
 cated that the formality and abstractness of biological 
 systems is such that they are not affected by the differences 
 in their content; and that a particular fact has not its 
 particular significance to them, but only its general signi- 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ficance as a fact about an organism. But we shall find a 
 graver sign of that formality in the fitness of the systematic 
 formulae to explain facts which do not come under the 
 special sciences of living things, but which still are facts 
 about individuals or systems. It is not necessary to detail 
 the particular results of the outer confusion. We have seen 
 the arts of human life ascribed to the factors of organic 
 evolution, and a vast literature has by this time accumulated 
 under the form that every evolution, that is, everything 
 individual, is a biological evolution, that is, is organism. I 
 would be slow to condemn any wide view of the organism 
 on account of its width, but danger arises when distinctively 
 human qualities become mere adjectives of protoplasm. It 
 is probable that the popular quasi-biological evolutionism is 
 yet the promise of that working doctrine of individuality 
 for science which at present we cannot find ; but so long 
 as the biology from which it draws its eager metaphors is 
 nothing but the denial of individuality, the formal applica- 
 tion of the logic of bare identity to the organism, we can 
 expect no stable construction from such theories. In any 
 case, the authority of biology over individuals of every kind 
 which are not organisms, and the degree of its authority 
 over the qualities of men, remain at present undefined ; and 
 such indefiniteness is due to the abstractness and the 
 fallacy of that method which can so freely be applied to 
 what you please. 
 
 We must include among the features of biology which 
 demand criticism, the vagueness, ambiguity, or positive self- 
 contradiction of its most important terms and conceptions ; 
 for this character will also be reduced to a common origin 
 with the others. What, for instance, is function? The 
 term is used as undefined and as needing no definition be- 
 cause of its simplicity. If it is all the qualities of a given 
 part, then what is & functionless structure! If it is the end 
 of a part, that respect in which it subserves the whole, then 
 what are its other activities, and in what respect are they 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. J 
 
 not its end? We learn that structure precedes function in 
 ontogeny, and, for the purposes of abstract embryology, we 
 know what the phrase means. But the thesis is a biologi- 
 cal thesis, and biology deals throughout with the relation of 
 structure to function in general. And I cannot think that 
 such a general consideration can be firm while its terms are 
 capable of the most various meanings. If the structure of 
 to-day answers to the function of to-morrow and not of to- 
 day, then it is not to-day's structure. Such an abjection 
 can only seem captious until one has learned from the 
 theories that the vehicle of qualities makes to-day's structure 
 and to-morrow's function, and that therefore they fit one 
 another. Such confusions of terms are the very source of 
 controversy, for the latter never lives except upon the plat- 
 form of a common and uncriticised fallacy. Are acquired 
 qualities inherited ? Tell me first of a quality which is not 
 acquired, or of one which is not inherited. Is variation 
 purposive or no ? Let us first find anything organic which 
 is not purposive. I do not wish to prejudge such matters ; 
 but it certainly seems necessary that they should be judged. 
 There are thus certain reasons why we should examine 
 biological methods. There are also certain apologies which 
 may be made for the method of criticism which dominates 
 this essay ; and they must be mentioned in this place be- 
 cause of the lively objections which that method must call 
 forth in the reader's mind. Criticism is not denial, and an 
 interpretation and comparison of systematic theories is only 
 possible by means of the demonstration of the various planes 
 of abstraction on which they treat the problems. In thus 
 bringing them together and studying them in relation to re- 
 search, we come really to understand them for the first time. 
 For what is explicit in a theory, is in most cases by no 
 means its most important part ; and the postulates which 
 have been taken for granted, the infallible method of obser- 
 vation, and the ambiguities of conceptions, contain what is 
 most influential in the systems. When their point of view 
 
8 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 is given, the rest follows of necessity ; but it is the business 
 of the student of theory to define the point of view. 
 Further, this method of bringing implicit foundations into 
 the light is the only means we have for arriving at a state- 
 ment of problems, for such a statement does not form part 
 of the programme of a systematic hypothesis. For the 
 hypothetical agent, by means of its self-contradiction, as- 
 sumes the whole problem into itself, and appears to be ade- 
 quate to its solution only so long as that self-contradiction 
 is not made manifest. In this way, as we shall see, all the 
 various forms of vehicles of qualities hide, but cannot be 
 said to be aware of the problem of the nature of organic 
 individuality. In like manner the descriptions of the 
 hypothetical processes of organic evolution hide, but are 
 never the means of stating, the problem of the nature of 
 organic qualities. For the same reason the critical method 
 is necessary to biology, if that science is to present any 
 continuity in its development, and any germinal relationship 
 to research, because we must expose an implicit thread of 
 continuity in the systems, and discover the manner in which 
 the theories abstract from fact in order that they may take 
 the form of systems. It would be a hopeless task to exa- 
 mine all the theories in detail, and to compare them ex- 
 ternally. That has often enough been done with but little 
 result, for this one reason, that their implications were not 
 made evident. 
 
 But a more important defence for the method is its suc- 
 cess in the interpretation of organisms and of the methods 
 of describing them. The history of biology shows that 
 critical doctrines have had their place in the development 
 of the science, and that their influence has been greater and 
 more permanent than that of the hypothetical theories. The 
 doctrine of type, for instance, as followed by such men as 
 Goethe, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, and Duges, as well as by more 
 recent authors, has been the clearest guide to morphology. 
 It is true that it was merely morphological and abstracted 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 9 
 
 entirely from process and change ; but that is equally true 
 of the works of Darwin, Naegeli, de Vries, and Weismann. 
 It differed from the theories of these workers, however, in 
 that it was an incontrovertible presentation of the nature 
 of morphological qualities. For our recent schools deny, 
 in their first postulate, the unity of plan in the structure 
 of the individual, not recognising the necessity of organic 
 proportions. The doctrine of vitalism, again, may be called 
 critical, in that it does no more than to propound the pro- 
 blem of organic activity. Changes, it says, are conditioned 
 in every case by ends ; as the doctrine of type asserts that 
 measurements are in every case conditioned by proportions. 
 These two doctrines differ from the hypothetical biology, in 
 that in their case room is left for the progressive discovery of 
 the how from observation, and that the teleological problem 
 remains in evidence. That the how is abstracted from by 
 the hypotheses may be easily learned from their treatment 
 of inheritance. For, in that respect, as in others, they take 
 no account of real process, yet supply its place with im- 
 possible and unknowable process. They take no cognisance 
 of the rights of physiology, and, more fatally, contradict its 
 possibility with their quasi-physiology. For the matter is 
 treated as though variation were variation of the adult image 
 this quality having appeared, and that other quality having 
 disappeared whereas variation must be variation of the 
 germ, or, better, of the whole. In the same way we must not 
 think of inheritance as immediate, but as mediate ; and the 
 middle term is not except for hypothesis the abstract 
 qualities of the adult image carried each in its respective 
 vehicle. A special case of the same abstraction is the habit 
 of regarding structure as maintaining itself from day to day 
 by no reason at all, as though it were made of cast iron, and 
 persisted in a material which had no interest in the pattern. 
 Yet this body, incomparably stable as it is, in the midst of 
 ever varying accident, is maintained daily in material which 
 is incomparably unstable surely this occurs somehow. The 
 
10 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 Protozoa have complex structures and well-ordered changes, 
 yet many of them can put on form, and cast it off like a 
 garment. And if the monad has its lash mediately because 
 of evolutionary processes which have gone on through a 
 very great number of years, yet it has it also immediately 
 because of something else, for the lash has gone and has 
 appeared again before your eyes. That other because has its 
 rights even prior rights ; for that other because is what is 
 inherited. Yet it is not even formally allowed for by the 
 hypothetical systems. It is not necessary to multiply ex- 
 amples of the abstractions by which alone the hypotheses 
 can work. But it is largely in respect of such dogmatic abstrac- 
 tions that I would negatively characterise the critical method. 
 But the most important contributions under this method 
 are those which we owe to the professed students of philo- 
 sophy, and the last part of my apology must deal with the 
 right to allude in, parts to their work about organisms, as to 
 certain biological doctrines among others, in our study of 
 biological theory in general. I am aware of the maxims 
 about the rights of every science in its own sphere. So far 
 as the sciences of inorganic nature, and the abstract sciences 
 of organisms are concerned, those statements have a certain 
 though a limited validity. But the doctrine of the indepen- 
 dence of science from philosophy, always over emphasised, 
 has, in the case of biology, no meaning whatever. In a 
 word, the problem of philosophy as regards organisms is 
 the problem of biology ; and you may regard either develop- 
 ment you please as an aberrant form of the other ; for the 
 present point is merely that they are the same. The most 
 concrete science of life may, for our purpose, be called by 
 any convenient name. But we can, at least, be sure of its 
 content. It deals, in alternative ways which absolutely ex- 
 clude one another, with the ideal unity which underlies 
 organic differences in the individual ; it effects a synthesis 
 of abstract sciences by means of a theory of individuality ; 
 it brings nature under the form of self-consciousness. On 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. I I 
 
 that ground we may regard the critical study of organisms 
 as organisms as having the right to a place among the hypo- 
 thetical theories of organisms as bare organisms, and we may 
 justly use it as their criterion. 
 
 The theories which we shall examine will be found to deal 
 with one feature of organisms alone, and that feature is 
 universal. . That is to say, it belongs to all organisms be- 
 cause they are organisms, and to every part and quality and 
 stage of organisms. We judge that the feature is one be- 
 cause the theories exclude one another ; and we judge that 
 it is universal^ because the particular differences of organisms 
 do not affect it, so that it is impossible to conceive of any 
 organic forms or functions which would not support the 
 formulae of the theories, so long as they were the forms and 
 the functions of organisms or of their parts. It is universal 
 because the hypotheses are empty of differentiated content 
 and formal, and because to them, every phenomenon is of 
 equal and of one significance. Now this universal feature 
 in organisms is represented in the systems by means of the 
 hypothetical agent. One need only mark the diversity of 
 hypotheses in order to see at once that the agent is uni- 
 versally necessary, that it does not signify in the least what 
 form the agent takes so long as it does its work, and that 
 the peculiar nature of its activity is never expressed. We 
 shall find that the agent has many qualities, of which we 
 may here glance at the most significant. It is that in which 
 the possible is actual, it is the vehicle for latent qualities. 
 It is that which persists throughout the manifold changes of 
 the organism, preserving thereby the specific image ; and it 
 is that which is one and identical in all parts. It is that 
 reality which lies behind the confusing appearance of the 
 creature, which yet is unknown except through those appear- 
 ances, and therefore, is mediately and even falsely known. 
 It is the sphere in which qualities are separate, discrete, 
 numerable unities, and is the only avenue of relation be- 
 tween qualities. With regard to the qualities it is purely 
 
12 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 active, and they to it are purely passive ; it is in no relation 
 of reciprocity with them, but is absolutely self determining 
 and other determining. All the rationale of qualities is 
 taken up into the agent, which effects this here, and that 
 there, by no reason which can be given. It is the identical 
 substance from which the manifold appearances radiate ; it 
 is the secret of their teleological form. 
 
 I consider that everyone who marks this half of every 
 system that half, namely, which deals with the relation of 
 the qualities to one another and to the agent will be in- 
 clined to agree that we have here to do with a properly 
 metaphysical conception. He will recognise in the agent 
 the hypostasis of a logical distinction into a quasi-physio- 
 logical or quasi-psychological distinction, and will be irresist- 
 ibly led to compare the abstract identity of the individual 
 organism, whatever form it may take through the caprice of 
 hypothesis, with the abstract substance or the thing in itself 
 of the popular metaphysic which depends on what is called 
 the relativist theory of knowledge. And when he learns 
 that this hypothetical agent is not only necessary to every 
 system of the dogmatic biology, as explaining the develop- 
 ment of the individual, but is also necessary to the doctrines 
 of organic evolution which form the other half of every 
 system, he will be willing to reconsider the maxim about 
 the unassailable rights of every science in its own sphere ; 
 for this reason, that the hypothetical agent is in every case 
 in contradiction with the very possibility of those researches 
 for which biology undertakes the synthesis. 
 
 But one may deny the validity of that maxim on more 
 general grounds than these. Even though the identity of 
 the biological and philosophical problems as regards organ- 
 isms were not so obvious or so bare as it is, we should still 
 be justified in bringing them together. There are no chasms 
 in science, and so long as knowledge is man's knowledge, 
 it is one. The world is not made in compartments answer- 
 ing to university lectureships. 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 13 
 
 Certainly if this matter of the independence of sciences 
 had really been dominant in knowledge, we should by this 
 time have had nothing but collectors' catalogues on the one 
 hand, and a dead scholasticism on the other. And many 
 evils do at present come on us from the proverb in question, 
 even when it is not merely a cover for cheap ridicule. 
 Isolation is as abstractly self-assertive as is invasion, and a 
 philosophy which is not in active sympathy with science is 
 making a boast of its inadequacy. And the outstanding 
 evil is that every science suffers from an insular ignorance 
 of what is meant by the others ; philosophy, for instance, 
 at present knows little of animals and plants but what it 
 has learned through the biology of hypothesis, and accepts 
 the results of the latter for observation j and biology is con- 
 tent to find the true differences of organisms in the structure 
 of small particles within them, through an inadequate 
 knowledge of the methods of physics. In a word, one 
 science is only too ready to accept the abstractions of others 
 as answering to the nature of the matter studied. Certainly, 
 on the other hand, there are limits to every man's time. 
 But, as I said, in the case of biology and philosophy, we 
 have other and more definite grounds for denying a division. 
 What are evolution, epigenesis, individuality, adaptation, qual- 
 ity in general, possibility or latency, and necessity ? I con- 
 sider that these fundamental conceptions of biology, which 
 form the content of its discussions, are conceptions of 
 philosophy also and in the same way. 
 
 But biology has been denned in various ways, and these 
 definitions must be compared with its actual endeavour. 
 Perhaps it is most commonly regarded as one among the 
 other sciences of organisms, and as on the same plane with 
 them. In so far as it is not a term roughly applied to the 
 whole study of life collectively, it comes to indicate a sort 
 of supplement to the more definite observational sciences, 
 dealing with distributions, origins, and the like. To such a 
 point of view, biology is a vanguard to the whole force of 
 
14 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 investigation, dealing provisionally, and therefore more or 
 less hypothetically, with matters which in the end are such as 
 must be studied as form, function, and the like. Now there 
 is a vast deal of inexact information scattered through bio- 
 logical literature, and the theories are on the whole as de- 
 pendent on it as on research. Still, any one of the theories 
 will be found to treat all morphological and physiological 
 results as merely material for its purpose, and as by no 
 means complete in themselves. To anatomy, structure is 
 ultimate, and has nothing to do with change ; but to 
 biology, structure is in some way derivative. And there is 
 no result of any one of its fellow sciences which has not a 
 significance to biology. 
 
 Another common definition is even more obviously un- 
 true. It is, that biology is the most abstract of the studies 
 of life, having the object of reducing their results to the 
 form of mechanical and physical processes, and of translat- 
 ing the variety of the qualities of an organism into terms of 
 the physical structure and chemical composition of its pro- 
 toplasm. I have never seen a more remarkable instance of 
 the self-deceptive power of a pretended method than this. 
 For you will find that the method is to be that certain 
 qualities, "primary," are the organism for biology, and that 
 these are the quasi-crystallised manifestation of the fine 
 structure of protoplasm. But the practice is to take, for 
 biology, even the beauty and the joy of a creature as on a 
 level with its bones, and to rank its instincts as no lower 
 than the extraordinary variety of objects which are called 
 \ its protoplasm. On the whole, our science is not a mere 
 chemistry of hypothetical substances, or a mere physic of 
 hypothetical " aggregates." 
 
 There is more observation in the definition of biology as 
 the theory of the outer relations of the whole creature. 
 Organism and environment, individual and species, parent 
 and child, are, indeed, relations which are subjects for 
 biology. Communities and colonies, instinct, external ap- 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 15 
 
 pearance, adaptation to circumstances, and other matters re- 
 lating to the whole organism reappear in every theory. 
 And there is thus a warrant for regarding the unity of the 
 organism as the object of biological study as distinguished 
 from those sciences which deal with aspects only. But 
 wholeness is not one aspect among others, but includes all 
 aspects. And, in fact, the systems are ever occupied with 
 all the aspects as well as with the unity, so that biology 
 does not deal with certain facts about organisms, but deals 
 with all the facts in a certain manner. All the facts of 
 morphology, embryology, classification, and the like, are 
 included ; but they are included as having a reference to 
 the unity of the organism, and as facts about whole in- 
 dividual organisms. In a great part of its extent, indeed, it 
 deals with facts just as bare facts, without troubling itself 
 as to their concrete variety. It takes organs as organs in 
 general, parts as parts, and periods as periods ; and, includ- 
 ing them all as differences, it studies their manner of relation 
 to one another in the whole organism. In like manner 
 structure, function, the rise of these in ontogeny, and their 
 several normalities and perversions, are all included as 
 aspects, not entirely separate from one another, but of one 
 whole, the organism. So also are habits, surroundings, and 
 advantages, referred by biology to a certain unity. And as 
 these are all qualities, they are brought together by our 
 science as qualities of individuals. Again, the differences 
 of alternative forms, or of successive forms in a cycle of 
 such, are considered in relation to one another, as the 
 members of a unity which, in such cases as these, can have, 
 so far as appearance goes, no apparent existence ; and the 
 theories are mainly occupied with imagining for it an ap- 
 parent, but not yet discovered, existence. We may, therefore, 
 regard biology as a science which deals with whole organ- 
 isms, if we qualify that statement by indicating, that as 
 there is no whole organism which is not also its parts and 
 stages and alternative forms, so the science deals with these 
 
4 
 1 6 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 various differences as they are brought into a certain kind 
 of unity. For the present purpose then, we may define 
 biology as the synthesis of several abstract ancillary sciences 
 of living things, which works by means of a theory of the 
 relation of manifold differences and aspects to one another 
 in the unity of the organism. And we may regard its pre- 
 liminary task as the formulation of some conception^ of that 
 unity ; for some theory of the nature of an individual and 
 of its qualities is, at least, logically prior to the gathering 
 into one of the various aspects and parts of the organism. 
 In justification of that belief we find a theory of the unity 
 of the organism as the chief element in every system of 
 biology. 
 
 It is at this point that we may discriminate between the 
 dogmatic and the critical biology ; and the test of the 
 nature of every system is the manner in which it treats of 
 the unity in question. No one can deny its necessity to 
 theory ; but it is possible to represent it in two ways. The 
 actual method of the dogmatic biology is, as I said, com- 
 pounded of its necessary and of its professed form ; and of 
 these two the former requires that it should throughout refer 
 all differences to the unity of the organism, and the latter 
 requires that it should take no cognisance of anything 
 which cannot be observed, or which is not at least capable 
 of being seen if our instruments are good enough. For the 
 professed form requires that no distinction should be made, 
 which is not a distinction of one apparent difference, or 
 quality, or part, from another. Now no one has ever seen 
 the unity of the organism lying among its parts. So the 
 dogmatic biology is in the dilemma that the distinction 
 which it must use at every step of its argument does not 
 answer to a phenomenal difference ; so that the particular 
 nature of the difference cannot be given, in its theory, from 
 observation of it. Hence its actual form. " The unity," it 
 says, a is there ; but there can be nothing there^ but objects 
 of various kinds which are phenomenally different and dis- 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. I/ 
 
 tinguishable from one another; therefore, the unity is a 
 phenomenal difference of some kind which we have not yet 
 discovered, but which will some day, perhaps to-morrow, be 
 discovered by microscopic research ; and in the meantime, 
 since we cannot do without the unity, /think it is probably 
 these granules clumped together in the nucleus, 1 but you 
 think it is these distributed granules which stain with acid 
 fuchsin, 2 while he thinks it is a kind of thinking and willing 
 thing in the various parts which yet, of course, does not 
 think or will in the every-day sense of the word." 3 
 
 Until the unity of the organism has been discovered as 
 a phenomenal difference, it is plain that just these hypo- 
 theses as to what kind of difference it is may be multiplied 
 to any extent, and that it is not easy to say to which of them 
 one ought to subscribe. But it is also not less plain that such 
 hypotheses are absolutely necessary to the dogmatic biology. 
 And we have, in fact, very many theories in this kind, some 
 of which will be examined in the third chapter. 
 
 Since, according to this method of biology, there is 
 nothing in the organism which is not a difference, and since 
 the unity itself is a difference which externally acts on the 
 others in a quite unique manner, it follows that the differ- 
 ences are not themselves in every case the unity at the 
 same time. They may be called mere differences, a con- 
 ception which in return requires a principle of unity exter- 
 nal to them if there is to be unity at all. And on this 
 point the dogmatic biology is not silent. For it, the quali- 
 ties which make up the organism are independent of one 
 another as separate constituent elements of the body. This 
 point of view arises immediately from the professed form 
 of the science, in conjunction with its necessary form. 
 For the latter requires that biology should in the first place 
 have a theory of qualities as differences and as identity ; 
 but observation does not seem to give qualities as identical, 
 but only as this and that mere difference ; and these differ- 
 
 1 Weismann, etc. 2 Altmann, etc. Stahl, etc. 
 
 B 
 
IS PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ences are distinguished from one another by observation as 
 one thing from its neighbour. Therefore it says, "Any 
 two qualities are not one thing, but two things ; and in the 
 end of analysis the body is made up of a certain number of 
 differences ; which, by means of the dominant unity, are 
 kept together and determined separately into their right 
 proportions and successions. A latent quality is just as 
 much one thing as those which are manifest, only that for 
 the time being it is a hidden thing, still preserving its 
 separate existence in another form within the body." 
 
 Again, each difference, having its own separate existence, 
 can be changed in any way without affecting the other con- 
 stituent elements of the organism. It also has it own use 
 or significance, by reason of which it exists ; and that use is 
 not found in the other differences, nor is its existence de- 
 rived from that of the other differences. This is little more 
 than another way of saying what we noticed above, with 
 regard to the independence of qualities. But it indicates 
 that the reason for any quality or part is not to be found in 
 other qualities or parts, but in some external and inde- 
 pendent value of its own ; and that the existence of one 
 difference is not accounted for or conditioned by the exist- 
 ence of others. In a word, the rationale of organic parts is 
 not to be found in their relation to one another, for they 
 have for our theories no such inner relation, but in the 
 external and independent use of each part. And of such 
 qualities, successively added to one another during history 
 (and each persisting in its own right of external usefulness 
 after it has been added), the organism which we see has 
 been put together. 
 
 The actual form of the biology of systematic hypothesis 
 is thus dependent on the three postulates which I have 
 indicated, and which are one in origin. They are as 
 follows : 
 
 i. That the qualities of the individual are discrete, 
 numerable, constituent elements of which the organism is 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 19 
 
 the total sum ; and have, therefore, each the value of an 
 ultimate unit for biology. They are thus independent of 
 one another as regards their significance, maintenance, 
 development in the individual, existence when latent, in- 
 heritance and variation, and acquirement by the race. 
 
 2. That all the qualities of the organism and all its stages 
 are the manifestation of, and are related to one another 
 only through an agent or system of agents within the known 
 body. The agent, which answers to the unity of the organ- 
 ism, is purely self-determining ; it is in the attitude of pure 
 activity to the body, which, in consequence, is in the atti- 
 tude of pure passivity to the agent. The agent may be 
 associated with any particular microscopic appearance in 
 the body, or with any particular states of its feeling, or it 
 may be regarded as not yet discovered ; but in every case 
 it is formally allowed to have such a phenomenal existence. 
 It carries the qualities when they are latent and carries 
 alternative qualities, and it manifests these when and where 
 they ought to be manifested. If the agent is a " material 
 vehicle of hereditary qualities " there is a distinct agent to 
 each difference in the organism, but a system may be given 
 to such agents by the hypothesis of a material " architec- 
 ture " from which they are unfolded. If the agent, on the 
 other hand, be a quasi-psychical principle, there is only 
 one such ; and its system of differences, answering to the 
 known differences of the body, is a system of ideas dimly 
 apprehended. 
 
 3. That the adaptedness of organisms is due to the external 
 addition of new qualities to the rest, which henceforward 
 are included among, but not conditioned, by the qualities 
 which have, up to that time, existed. The environment is 
 something separate from the organism ; and the latter is, 
 by the addition of new qualities to the trust of the agent, 
 thus educated up to circumstances which can exist without 
 it. The inertia of the agent is such that it may persist in 
 presenting qualities which are unrelated to other qualities 
 
20 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 and which have ceased to have any special external and in- 
 dependent use. The various qualities of the organism are 
 thus due to the slow addition of modifications through 
 many years of changing circumstances. 
 
 Of these postulates, the first is often stated, and often 
 unconsciously present, but it is universally implied in the 
 methods and terms of the theories. The second is a mere 
 generalisation from the theories of ontogeny, which take 
 two forms that, namely, of the material vehicle of hereditary 
 qualities and that of the quasi-psychical principle. And the 
 third is the postulate for the theories of adaptation by the 
 transformation of species. The three postulates are not 
 only necessary to one another, but they are also necessary 
 to the theories of the biology of systematic hypothesis. 
 Each of the latter has, therefore, two parts, of which one 
 is an hypothetical doctrine of individuality, and the other 
 an hypothetical doctrine of adaptation. 
 
 Now this peculiar method, as revealed in its three pos- 
 tulates, is in many ways in contradiction with the possibility 
 of research. Such contradictions come up repeatedly in 
 the simplest study of the theories, but we need not here 
 notice more than that which exists between the postulated 
 independence of differences and the ordinary methods 
 either of morphology or of physiology. For the proportions 
 of morphology are the denial of the independence of single 
 measurements. And the science of physiology works with 
 the invariably justified assurance that qualities and changes 
 within the individual are causally related in complex mazes 
 of inter-dependence; that is, the differences are known 
 to research under the form of reciprocity. And one can 
 hardly regard that as a germinal form of biology which 
 would make nonsense of morphology and of physiology. Nor 
 is that a stable form of biology which plainly cannot be 
 either refuted or supported by observation. 
 
 And we may here repeat what the method really is. 
 It is the hypostasis of logical distinctions into the organism. 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 21 
 
 Universal and particular become respectively the agent and 
 the body of known differences. Any distinction between 
 differences becomes a chasm in nature, and because quali- 
 ties are distinguished from one another, they are therefore 
 discrete and numerable constituent elements. Such a 
 method may obviously be defended as a working method ; 
 and that defence, if successful, would be justified in using 
 the proverb about the rights of each science in its own 
 sphere. But the defence is not applicable to the present 
 case for two reasons. First, the working hypothesis does 
 not work. It is alone in science, and there is none like it. 
 For one can only know relations, and this is the denial of 
 relations. And nothing whatever can be deduced from it 
 when it has been made, for it is exceedingly abstract and 
 formal. The agent does what we see, but no theorist has 
 ever ventured to predict what it will be found to do in cases 
 not yet observed. It makes my hand, but I cannot judge 
 that therefore it will make a foot to answer to the hand. 
 From all its operations of all kinds but one, you cannot 
 show that that other operation is necessary. It is the pure 
 form of arbitrarily doing, what it does. And second, the 
 hypothesis is itself only the bare fact of the hypothesis. 
 Qualities are ultimate units, but no two authors will agree 
 as to how the body should be divided, and as to where 
 analysis should stop, to obtain these units. All qualities 
 are the work, not of one another, but of the agent but we 
 have been given twenty agents of the most various kinds, 
 every one of which is as good as the others. And no 
 hypothesis has yet even barely indicated how the agent does 
 its task, so that the working hypothesis does not even try 
 to work. We have no physiology of the idioplasm or of 
 the immanent soul. 
 
 Contrast, on the other hand, the postulates of biology 
 with. the atomic theory. The latter provides agents to 
 which the present criticism is inapplicable. For to the one 
 simple form of the reciprocal attractions and impenetra- 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 bility of atoms the whole diversity of physical facts can be 
 reduced. But there is no simple form for the biological 
 agent ; it is more complex than the organism. And 
 reasons can be given for the different behaviours of atoms 
 under different circumstances, but the idioplasm is the very 
 principle of unreason, the very denial of the intelligibility of 
 differences in relation to one another. And further, one 
 can hardly call that a working instrument, which the crafts- 
 men do not, in fact, use. Is any one of the theories of 
 agents of any use whatever to the practical embryologist? 
 
 These are some of the features of the actual form of 
 biology, and they are at first somewhat difficult to reconcile 
 with the requirements of its professed form. The contra- 
 diction of research and the unrestrained hypothesis seem 
 quite at variance with the exhaustive collections of facts 
 which characterise the theories. Can it be possible to 
 build up theories from such innumerable phenomena, with- 
 out achieving certainty and solidity of construction ? The 
 variety of the theories shows the possibility ; but the reason 
 of the matter is no less plain. The arrays of facts are in 
 some way rather illustrations for the hypothetical systems, 
 than proofs or supports of them. You cannot criticise 
 theories of this class by referring to different facts, for facts, 
 however numerous and however various they may be, do 
 not discriminate, so long as, for the theory in question, 
 they are facts of the same kind. And, in so far as the 
 systems deal with the nature of individuality and with 
 adaptation and with the nature of qualities, they are deal- 
 ing with universal features of organisms, and organic differ- 
 ences do not discriminate for them. 
 
 You may expect to get light on the immanent soul or the 
 idioplasm, on natural selection or use inheritance, by the ex- 
 haustive enumeration of various individuals and various 
 adaptations, as soon as you learn anything about causality 
 by playing billiards, or throw light on the nature of number 
 by counting things in the street. As numerable, things are 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 23 
 
 similar ; and as the adapted qualities of individuals, all the 
 facts about organisms are similar. Everything organic is 
 what it is because of natural selection, in that it has not 
 been killed off; and equally, everything is what it is be- 
 cause of use inheritance, in that it is the product of the 
 whole germ which is the product of the whole parent. In 
 like manner, everything organic belongs to the unity of the 
 organism, and as such will not refuse to admit of the formula 
 either of the idioplasm, or of the immanent soul, or of any 
 other agent you please which represents in all essential re- 
 spects the unity of the organism. 
 
 I said above that the biology of hypothesis is little more 
 than the mere application to organisms of a certain definite 
 metaphysical doctrine, and that this metaphysical doctrine 
 is clearly and fully stated in the three postulates which 
 dominate or rather constitute the theoretic systems in ques- 
 tion. Therefore we can only find the thread of continuity in 
 the systems by the examination of this common fallacy which 
 runs through them, but which they do not question. They 
 assume it and the postulates derived from it, as unquestion- 
 able, chiefly because the metaphysical dogma which we are 
 about to consider is taken to be the beginning and end of 
 metaphysic, by the teachers of natural science. The latter, 
 indeed, are never weary of stating it, as the sure and ul- 
 timate ground of their method, although it is in contra- 
 diction with the possibility of any science. 
 
 Now the first postulate gave us qualities as independent 
 and discrete constituent elements. And the second gave 
 us the "vehicle of qualities" or agent which effects for 
 them a certain external union. This vehicle was, as it were, 
 the inner side of the quality ; it is that in which the true 
 explanation of what appears to us as a mere collocation of 
 qualities is to be found ; it is the reality of which the given 
 organism is the mere manifestation. It is the sphere in 
 which possibility and actuality are one ; it is unqualified 
 substance or abstract identity. Such characters will be 
 
24 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 revealed for the " vehicle " in our study of the theories 
 which deal with it. But in this place we shall find the true 
 origin of the independence of qualities as merely collocated 
 things, and of the agent as the " vehicle " of qualities. Our 
 two postulates arise directly from the relativist theory of 
 knowledge, and the agent is the thing-in-itself. In this re- 
 spect we shall find the biology of hypothesis to be a form of 
 metaphysic. 
 
 We may first dispose of an objection which at once arises. 
 It might be said that there is one great difference between 
 the vehicle of qualities and the thing-in-itself, in that the 
 former always receives, formally, a phenomenal existence, 
 while the latter is formally unknowable. But the pheno- 
 menal existence of the agent is a mere confusion, which is 
 simply due to the difficulty which the theorists experience 
 in drawing distinctions otherwise than between phenomena. 
 For in so far as the agent has qualities is determined in- 
 stead of merely " carrying " qualities, it becomes itself one 
 of the known differences ; and as such, it becomes one of 
 the elements for the uniting of which alone the agent is 
 postulated. 
 
 The movement of the relativist doctrine is shortly as 
 follows. There is the individual experience, which is an 
 orderly and intelligible unity. Within this unity there come 
 to be distinguished two sides, the side of unity and the side 
 of multiplicity ; or two elements working together, the sub- 
 ject and the object. Each of these parts is, by the common 
 habit of men, regarded only as it is in the whole, so that 
 the abstraction of one from the other is, in the same move- 
 ment, their synthesis. But, for theory, the abstraction comes 
 to be dogmatic ; and we are given a subject which is itself 
 only, and is not the object at all, and an object which is in 
 no way the subject; and these two things are not one in any 
 sense, but are for ever two utterly separate things standing 
 over against one another. And these two strangers some- 
 how conspire to make the individual experience. Therefore 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 2$ 
 
 that somehow comes into question, because the result of 
 their union is an intelligible whole is, in short, experience. 
 There must be a principle of the order is it to be found in 
 one of the elements, or in both ; and if in one, then in 
 which of them ? And there must be a principle of the 
 suitability of the one to the other is it to be found in one 
 of them, or perhaps in some third stranger ? Here, it is 
 evident, there come into question the whole articulation of 
 the world we know, the rule of universal law, the unfailing 
 possibility of finding causes for effects and effects for 
 causes, the secret of the reasons for things. The very possi- 
 bility of knowledge, the very ground and foundation of our 
 world, is therefore to be sought either in the abstract sub- 
 ject or the abstract object, if these two elements are re- 
 garded as wholly strangers to one another. 
 
 Now the first instinct of everyone, as soon as he has ac- 
 cepted this uncompromising cleavage of experience into 
 two self-sufficient factors, is to regard the self as a pure re- 
 cipient, and to find the whole of the reasonable nature of 
 things grounded in the articulation of the abstracted objects. 
 " I am just mere I," says he, " and all the many things out- 
 side me, and even my dimmest and most intimate states, 
 are the other things, and are not at all myself. For between 
 me and them there is fixed the impassable gulf of knowing; 
 and in knowing anything I rank it at once as the other 
 thing. For myself, I am just the thing they all shine on ; 
 certainly the principle of the order is not in my blank sur- 
 face, but in them, as and how I find them." But the first 
 investigations which he makes into the avenues through 
 which knowledge comes to a man are enough to disturb 
 that simple belief, and to throw his speculation, by a natural 
 reaction, to the absolutely contrary point of view ; and he 
 will find the purely relativist doctrine of knowledge to be 
 much to his mind as the only thorough and self-consistent 
 explanation which remains possible to him. This doctrine 
 is grounded chiefly if not altogether on psychological con- 
 
25 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 siderations. What one perceives, it says, is not perceived 
 as it is, for one does not know the object, but only one's 
 own states which arise in presence of the object. Percep- 
 tion is partly false, in that the impression is in a different 
 kind from the object, having proportions and degrees which 
 are not objective proportions and degrees ; and it is partly 
 incomplete, in that there are only so many kinds of sensa- 
 tion, whereas the kinds of qualities may in reality be inex- 
 haustibly numerous ; and to the end it is only the ground 
 for judgments which may be mistaken. Knowledge of 
 things is not direct, but is mediate, and the mediation of a 
 perverting and inadequate sense is an insurmountable 
 barrier to the knowledge of what lies behind the sense im- 
 pressions. Qualities may be known, but only a certain 
 number of kinds of qualities, answering to the kinds of 
 organs which subserve perception of them ; and even 
 though sense were not, as ours is, limited, still because 
 sen^e still would mediate though endless qualities would be 
 known, yet the substance of which they are qualities would 
 still elude us. We know nothing otherwise than relatively 
 to the limitations and mediations of which we learn in 
 psychology. And this train of argument might be pursued 
 as far and as ingeniously as you like. For all process 
 must, for this point of view, deceive ; and the process is not 
 so simple as the theory uses to represent, nor is mediation 
 at one single point alone ; and as you cannot know the ob- 
 ject because sense intervenes, so, because the sense impres- 
 sion is also object, even sensation cannot be rightly or 
 adequately laid hold on, for every sensation is itself mediate 
 and relative in various respects ; or, in other words, sensa- 
 tion is not bare, but may be analysed. But the general 
 principle of the doctrine is simple ; and its most significant 
 results are as follows. 
 
 We were to find the principle of the intelligible order cf 
 things the secret of system in the world. Now it is plain 
 that this principle and this secret cannot be found, by the 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 2/ 
 
 doctrine which we are considering, in the world of outer 
 things. The elements for knowledge which are given from 
 the outer world are mere sequences of states of myself. 
 Such sequences rise and fade with waves of attention. 
 Their moments never exhibit a necessary articulation with 
 one another, but only a factual coincidence, concomit- 
 ance, or sequence. Their flow is utterly irrational and ac- 
 cidental. This quality exists with that quality, and we 
 know that it is so, but not why* This event succeeds that 
 event, and we call them effect and cause, but the unity of 
 the two cannot be known, and we can only say that this 
 companionship is just a way they have. If there be indeed 
 a reason in the object for that concomitance and for that 
 sequence, it is hidden in the recesses of the things as they 
 are, and not as they burst upon us in their isolation; it is an 
 unknowable reason and no reason. In the object, because 
 each sensation of it is discrete and by itself, we can find no 
 principle of reason. So, as de Vries says, the qualities of 
 the individual are separate self-sufficient things, in every re- 
 spect independent, and merely put together in certain 
 combinations and permutations to form the image. And 
 so, as Naegeli says, we cannot know organisms as they 
 really are, nor make an adequate comparison of them, for 
 we only know the heterogeneous qualities of them. There 
 is no necessity in the conjunction of qualities, they merely 
 exist externally side by side. And there is no knowledge 
 of the principle of unity in those various parts which make 
 up the individual, and this principle of unity must there- 
 fore be feigned as one of the parts externally controlling 
 the others. 
 
 But the principle of the intelligible nature of things is 
 found in the subject. A form of unity in difference is sup- 
 plied to the formless material and utter difference of sense. 
 That heterogeneity, without necessary articulation in itself 
 of such a kind as we can know, is articulated by the forms of 
 perception and of judgment, that is, by the fashioning ac- 
 
28 PROBLEMS OF BIOT.OGY. 
 
 tivities of the self, in order to experience. In the abstract 
 self, in the categories of its understanding, lies the secret of 
 the world. Not of that world which is but of its world ; a 
 partial glimpse, falsified utterly and forever by the mere 
 presence of those avenues of sense and of those very cate- 
 gories by which the formless becomes articulate. For we 
 have no reason to believe that the form of perception and 
 understanding in the knowing stranger is at the same time 
 the form of the known stranger that is the centre of the 
 theory ; for the form of the known stranger is unknown and 
 unknowable. 
 
 Certainly there is a saving clause, but the degree of its 
 validity is, from the nature of the case, hidden from us. 
 The subject is, to a certain unknown extent, and in a certain 
 unknown manner, formally adapted to have its manner and 
 its degree of knowledge of the things of reality. The forms 
 of the two strangers have this one point in common U'ho 
 made the world made me ; that is the last word of the argu- 
 ment ; and its saving clause is its condemnation as a 
 theory. 
 
 Now it need hardly be pointed out how foreign this pro- 
 duct of metaphysical abstraction is to anything which can 
 be called an evolutionary point of view. For, to an evolu- 
 tionist, the terms of a relation are fundamentally one, one 
 in origin, one in reason, being made for and by one another. 
 To him their difference from one another is nothing but the 
 diversity which is necessary to the existence of true unity, 
 and which springs out of that unity. It is true that we find 
 theories of biology which discuss the mechanism by which a 
 stranger organism is fitted to a stranger environment. It 
 is true that other theories give us elaborate mechanisms by 
 which the thousand stranger qualities of the same organism 
 are kept together and ordered, although they have nothing 
 to do with one another. It is also true that we find theories 
 of the acquirement of a stranger mind by a stranger organism. 
 But in so far as these theories really regard the terms as 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 29 
 
 strangers to one another in so far as they make their 
 abstractions dogmatic, they are not evolutionary theories, 
 but are hypotheses which do not square with observation. 
 For observation does not find one of the terms existing 
 barely and alone or otherwise than as qualified by the other 
 term, and one element in a natural system cannot even be 
 described except as being the others. 
 
 In so far as the relativist doctrine affects theories as to 
 natural relations and it does so to a large extent it denies 
 the validity and completeness of the ordinary explanations 
 of research. For it does not find in the qualities and suc- 
 cessions of the object any intelligible, necessary or inner 
 relations to one another, denying real system, or at least the 
 knowledge of it. They are not intelligible because the 
 reason of the relation is hidden in the thing of reality, or 
 thing-in-itself, and because the qualities and moments of the 
 successions are isolated appearances, bursting on us out of 
 the dark. They are accidental, because, so long as we may 
 not understand the relations, we can never say, " If this is 
 so, then that cannot be otherwise ; " for one need not mul- 
 tiply examples to show that events, qualities, human char- 
 acter, are only necessary and can only be depended on in 
 proportion as they are intelligible and reasonable. They 
 are only held together externally, in that the inner nature 
 of the one is not at the same time the inner nature of the 
 other. We are not, in our biological theory, to look upon 
 the cause as the same as the effect, nor upon one organ as 
 inwardly identical with another. The identity has been 
 abstracted away into the dark region of the thing as it is, 
 but as it is not for us ; and mere external difference com- 
 prehends all that is given. And, given mere difference, 
 there is not the slightest ground for reason to stand upon. 
 
 The abstract identity, or thing-in-itself, is just the an- 
 thropomorphic agent of hypothesis. It is always the result 
 of dogmatic abstraction. Cleave the individual experience 
 into two self-sufficient factors, and you must make two an- 
 
30 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 thropomorphic agents, the unknowable self and the unknow- 
 able thing-in-itself. Cleave the individual organism into 
 self-sufficient qualities, and you must make an unknowable 
 " vehicle " for each of them. And because the reason for 
 every part of a system is properly to be found in every other 
 part, you must, when you dogmatically disrupt the system 
 by your abstraction, hide the reason for every part in the 
 arbitrary working of the agent. The system is what is to 
 be explained. Deny its real existence as immanent in every 
 one of its parts, and you must explain the appearance of 
 system by the external compulsion of each part by one 
 thing which is only characterised as not being one of the 
 parts. Abstract from the inner identity of the planets, and 
 you must give an angel to each to guide it in its courses. 
 Define the qualities of the organism by the first postulate 
 of biology, and the second must inevitably follow. The 
 thing-in-itself is an alogical principle, in that it hides within 
 the workings of its punctual and blank identity, the whole 
 reason of the system over which you have appointed it. 
 
 This doctrine of abstract identity is extraordinarily un- 
 workable when it is taken seriously. So long as you may 
 postulate one thing-in-itself to every system of qualities, the 
 matter is simple. But every system runs into every other 
 it is all in the end one system and you can hardly stop 
 short of the supposition that there is but one thing-in-itself. 
 But, in becoming one, it has lost its significance to the 
 theory. This numerical diversity of each noumenon is the 
 most interesting feature of this hypostasis of the concrete 
 universal as bare identity. It is demanded by the theory 
 because there are many individuals, and you cannot have 
 an individual which has not an identity of its own, a char- 
 acter of its own. But qualities come under successively 
 higher individualities, and the same events enter into differ- 
 ent patterns. On what principle were we to know where the 
 x of A B C ended and the^ of D E F began ? Even out 
 of school it is not easy to say what is one thing and what 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 31 
 
 is many, and the least reflection connects without limit. 
 But you cannot get over the difficulty by making the 
 noumena into a coherent system. For if they are deter- 
 mined in this way and that, they lose their character as 
 abstract identity. So that their abstract numerical diversity, 
 which is their sole raison d^tre, is an impossibility. That 
 unity, punctual, blank and unconditioned, is derived from 
 the self-identical unity of the abstract subject. For the 
 latter, being the pure focus of its experience, and not being 
 in any way that experience itself, being pure form un- 
 contaminated with content, becomes the model for the 
 noumenon. We have in it an example of a numerical 
 unity apparently bereft of qualities, a featureless identity 
 out of which differences and qualities do actually come. 
 And this formal conception is transferred to the object, 
 necessarily, as we shall see, because of the dogmatic ab- 
 straction of subject from object, so as to give rise to the 
 anthropomorphic agent. Once make your abstraction 
 dogmatic, and you cannot do otherwise, whenever you have 
 to do with the explanation of system, than go to the agent, 
 although the latter is in contradiction with itself and with 
 all methods of knowledge. 
 
 For in every perception and judgment, and indeed in 
 every sensation, the object reveals a twofold play of identity 
 and difference. No two things are so much the same as 
 to be indistinguishable in respect of somewhat, and that 
 somewhat^ even though it be only numerical, is a difference. 
 Nor are any two things so different as that we should not 
 distinguish them in respect of somewhat ; and that criterion 
 of distinction is the mark of the system within whose iden- 
 tity alone they can be compared. The universality of this 
 logical distinction, its necessity to every judgment, and its 
 reflection in the articulation of language, force it on every- 
 one's attention. Therefore, in philosophy, as in biology, you 
 must either recognise it as a twofold logical aspect of things, 
 or you must represent it as a quasi-phenomenal difference. 
 
32 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 If you choose the second course, your biology will provide 
 an idioplasm that bears all the qualities, which, except in it, 
 have no necessary or intelligible relation to one another ; 
 and the working of that agent will be, as has been demon- 
 strated, for ever unknowable. Your philosophy, in like 
 manner, will provide a noumenon^ which is itself for ever 
 hidden from us, but which radiates upon us its manifesta- 
 tions; and no one of these manifestations will carry us 
 beyond itself. So, although the idioplasm is supposed to 
 be quite phenomenal and the noumenon is supposed to be 
 in no sense phenomenal, I class them together as quasi- 
 phenomenal pictures of a logical distinction; for they are 
 both, for the purposes of their respective theories, un- 
 qualified, and yet are not ideal aspects of their respective 
 systems. For they both pretend to be real ; and as there 
 is nothing real which is not phenomenal (which gives us 
 the positive element in the quasi), so also there is nothing 
 phenomenal which is not determined (which gives us the 
 negative element). In such sciences as deal with system, 
 you cannot evade the distinction between universal and 
 particular ; and the form of your science as critical, or as 
 working with the hypothesis of the anthropomorphic agent, 
 depends altogether on whether you regard the distinction 
 as an instrument of method, or as a quasi-phenomenal 
 difference. And I cannot think that the latter way of treat- 
 ing the matter is justifiable even in a science with a charter 
 for its own sphere. It is to make use of an abstraction 
 which obtains in no one of the ancillary sciences of biology. 
 The form to morphology is nothing beside and beyond its 
 parts and proportions. But philosophy will give you a self 
 which is beyond its states, and biology an organism which 
 is beyond and beside its qualities. And you are left with 
 the insoluble problem as to how the abstracted universal is 
 related as if there could be a relation such as exists be- 
 tween particulars to the abstracted particular. The whole 
 method depends on a fiction which is not even a working 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 33 
 
 hypothesis; it is a mere logical fallacy. If biology is to 
 treat of individuality, we need a better form of doctrine than 
 that of the agent. As Mr. Seth x has well said : 
 
 " The particular as particular the mere self-identical, un- 
 qualified particular nowhere exists ; it is the abstraction of 
 a logic not wholly clear about its own procedure. And the 
 thing -in-itself is simply the fallacy of the mere particular in 
 another form. The mere particular and the mere universal 
 are alike abstractions of the mind ; what exists is the in- 
 dividual. All that is real is not particular but individual; 
 and the individual is a particular that is also universal, or, 
 from the other side, it is a universal a set of universals 
 particularised. The two sides are always there, and each is 
 only through the other. There is no existence which is not 
 determined so-and-so, that is, there is no substance without 
 qualities ; and equally there are no qualities without a sub- 
 stance to which they are referred. It is the nature of reality 
 so to be, and it is the nature of thought so to think. But 
 the substance is not an existence distinct from the quali- 
 ties something that can be separated from the qualities and 
 known by itself. The substance exists as qualified, and we 
 know it through its qualities. How else should we know 
 it?" 
 
 Thus the fallacy of postulating phenomenal differences to 
 answer to logical distinctions, the " thinking involved in 
 corporeal conceptions," lies at the root of all our biology 
 of hypothesis. The method is tempting because it is easy, 
 it is dangerous because its results cannot be refuted, and 
 it is useless because they cannot be proved. Biology, how- 
 ever, depends upon a working theory of individuality, and, 
 except for the postulates which I have named, there can 
 hardly be said to be any attempt at an expression for that 
 conception in the science. In the study of the various 
 biological expressions for the unity of the organism, and for 
 its differences, we have one criterion of the first import- 
 i Seth " Scottish Philosophy," 174. 
 
 C 
 
34 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ance by means of which we may test them. That test is, 
 the harmony or the contradiction of those expressions with 
 the ordinary methods of morphology and of physiology. In 
 a word, our appeal is to fact. And, in a matter of this 
 kind, we have not to do with numbers of facts ; the heaping 
 together of illustrations is useless. It is, however, im- 
 portant that we should abstract from no aspect of the facts 
 with which we deal, and that we should invent none. For 
 by the abstraction from real process, and by the invention 
 of the hypothetical agents and of the hypothetical processes 
 of adaptation by the transformation of species, the systems 
 are made. 
 
 The latter portion of the hypotheses demands special 
 notice, and special comparison with fact, because of the 
 eagerness with which the doctrine of organic evolution is 
 commonly received both as a statement of well established 
 fact, and as an adequate form of explanation for the adapt- 
 edness and for the particular forms of animals and plants. 
 We shall later see that its formulae do not adequately serve 
 the latter purpose ; but it is a separate question, whether 
 they are records of facts. Since the days of the doctrine 
 of type, the history of biology has chiefly been the history 
 of theories as to the transformation of species. According 
 to those theories, the similarities of organisms are due to 
 common descent, their differences from one another are due 
 to the variously modifying effects of the more or less in- 
 direct influence of circumstances, and their adaptedness 
 is due to the continuous action of environment on species, 
 and of one species on another, through long periods of time. 
 Starting from a common and obscure origin, the various races 
 have progressively become modified and have progressively 
 diverged from one another until those many and various 
 forms of life which we know have in the end been formed. 
 This progress, which, with some exceptions, is ever in the 
 direction of greater complexity or organisation, greater 
 specialisation of function and ever increasing adaptation to 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 35 
 
 varying circumstances, is accounted for on various principles. 
 A vague impulse to improvement is present in organisms. 
 Or, the individuals of a race, on arriving in new circumstances, 
 have experienced new needs, which have led to new actions; 
 these, when they have become habitual, affect in a purpose- 
 ful manner, by greater specialisation or by hypertrophy, the 
 organs involved in them ; and these changes in organisation 
 have led to identical inborn changes in the offspring of the 
 individuals concerned, so that the new needs, by modifica- 
 tion of individuals and by the preservation of those modifi- 
 cations in inheritance, are progressively satisfied in the 
 development of the race. Or, there is such an admixture 
 and elimination of living substance from a number of ances- 
 tors, in sexual reproduction, as leads to a variation of the 
 offspring, in certain respects and to certain degrees, from 
 the image of the parent ; a new organisation thus arises, and 
 this new creature, if it is more suited in any respect to 
 the given circumstances because of its variation, is able 
 to leave behind it more numerous and better equipped off- 
 spring than other members of its race can do ; so that the 
 character of the whole race is changed in a certain direc- 
 tion, or so that a dichotomy takes place, some members 
 following one direction and others another. I need not 
 here do more than enumerate other "factors of organic 
 evolution," such as sexual selection, isolation, and panmixia. 
 They are all forms of events which are supposed to have 
 occurred continuously or under certain conditions in the 
 history of every race, and to have determined the trans- 
 formation of the race into the form in which we now find 
 it. 
 
 It is not easy to think of the transformation of species, 
 apart from those several theories which have popularised the 
 conception, nor to ask whether or how it has taken place, 
 without coming to a conclusion in the matter by leading 
 evidence which is worse than useless. It is usually implied 
 that the transformation must have taken place, because by 
 
36 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 means of it alone can the various classifications and adapta- 
 tions of organisms be explained. But the fact of trans- 
 formation, even were every step of its progress before us, 
 could not explain anything of all that. The fact, even 
 when established, that a thing has vastly changed from its 
 former state, is not corroborated by the fact that it has such 
 and such adaptive qualities to-day ; nor, in its turn, is the 
 fact of the presence of those qualities illumined by the fact 
 that the thing was not at one time what it now is. And it 
 is certain that it is only this bare fact of change which is 
 used by the theories of organic evolution. That this is so 
 is shown by the presence of complete theories of the latter, 
 together with almost complete ignorance of the course of 
 the phylogeny of existing types. The facts of that secular 
 development are a matter for the most unrestrained con- 
 jecture. The theories have to do with the explanation of 
 adaptation, and of the nature of classification in general ; 
 they can hardly profess to be founded to any considerable 
 extent upon the evidences for the transformation of species. 
 Whoever will take those evidences apart from the uses 
 which the process is made to have for the hypothetical 
 systems, will find not only that all that significance which 
 has popularly been given to the process is gone, but also 
 that what real evidence there is, is surprisingly small. One 
 might fairly say that the evidence in support of the view 
 that the highly organised species of our time have arisen 
 from the lowly organised species of past ages is quite 
 balanced by the evidence against it, and that one has in the 
 end to rest on an overwhelming analogy in favour of the 
 transformation. The theory is in a sense a pis alkr. If 
 the vertebrate did not come from some sort of invertebrate, 
 then where did it come from ? And human institutions, 
 language, character, and other such systems make it im- 
 possible to believe that there is anything organic which does 
 not come out of simple beginnings and proceed, in course 
 of time, to a higher organisation. One might even adduce 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 37 
 
 the analogy of the development of the individual organism, 
 were it not that prevalent theories represent the body as 
 more complex in the germ than in the adult image. I am 
 utterly prejudiced in the matter, and cannot think of the 
 origins of animals and plants except as taking place by the 
 transformation of species. But apart from that prejudice, I 
 should not be persuaded by what evidence there is before 
 us. 
 
 For, so far as we know, the process does not take place 
 at present. I suppose that artificial selection is more 
 potent, and has more striking results, than any other factor 
 in the change, and it must work with an infinitely greater 
 rapidity. But, so far as I am aware, artificial selection has 
 never established a species of its own, and has never 
 established a variety which will not return to that from 
 which it came, as soon as it is set free from the artificial 
 selection and conditions. The answer to this objection 
 is familiar. It is that the artificial selection has not had 
 time, in the hundred or the thousand generations through 
 which it has acted, radically to alter the organisation of the 
 species. It is still fundamentally the same, and only super- 
 ficial alterations have been made in it. But it is difficult to 
 see what those distinctions mean. We can get the most 
 extraordinary changes in domestic animals and plants. 
 Pigeons, dogs, and roses offer extreme examples. If extent 
 of difference in very various qualities were our criterion, 
 then the greyhound and the spaniel seem considerably 
 different. The difference is as great as any which one can 
 imagine that any non-artificial factor could make, and there 
 seems to be no reason for supposing it to be a difference of 
 a special kind, such as would not be made by the natural 
 factors which are not due to human intervention. In what 
 sense then is the difference not radical, except in the sense 
 that it obliterates itself, while the supposed differences made 
 by natural factors do not so obliterate themselves ? And 
 there seems to be no meaning in the common argument 
 
38 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 that the mere length of time for which a quality has been 
 possessed by a race can make it more irrevocable and more 
 " fixed." If the quality is there, it is there ; and if it is not, 
 it is not. But what does it mean when you say it is fixed, 
 firmly rooted, or fundamental ? None of the qualities 
 which we have known to be in some way acquired by 
 artificial selection or by changed conditions are, in that 
 sense, fixed, even though a hundred generations have 
 included them. The species, when left to itself and to 
 normal conditions, will drop them in a few generations. 
 And it is not easy to see how there can be a difference be- 
 tween qualities which have been preserved for three hundred 
 years in a species by artificial selection and qualities which 
 have been preserved for n years by natural selection. In- 
 deed, the distinction of fixedness would seem to exclude 
 qualities which have been acquired, and superimposed on 
 the organism, at any time, however distant. To say the 
 least, nothing which we know of the behaviour of species at 
 the present day supports the theory of transformation. 
 
 The evidence from classification and from embryology is 
 not more convincing. It depends on the presence of ho- 
 mologies in structure which are not accompanied by analo- 
 gous function. For such points of resemblance are not, it 
 would appear, due to any resemblance in function or to any 
 identity in respect of their significance to the individual ; 
 they are rather accidental to the actual needs of the organ- 
 ism, and are therefore, because no other reason for them 
 can be found, to be ascribed to a common parentage. For this 
 reason "vestigial" organs in the adult, and the homologies 
 of the various stages of the embryo to the adult forms of 
 more generalised types, are regarded as especially signifi- 
 cant to the investigation of the relationships of species. 
 Thus, such a structure as the vermiform appendix, which 
 has apparently no special function in regard to digestion, is 
 the " representative " of a former large and functional 
 diverticulum, and proclaims a relationship with the other 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 39 
 
 mammalia the more clearly that it has no function, but 
 persists solely through a sort of inertia, so that no reason 
 can be found for it but this bare reason that it persists from 
 a time when it was of some service to the organism. Again, 
 the branchial slits in the mammalian embryo do not in any 
 way subserve respiration ; they are not, we are to believe, 
 necessary features of a necessary stage in the development 
 of the mammalian form ; there is not, in other words, any 
 reason for them. Therefore, they are the mere vestigia of 
 the past, persisting by no reason at all, and demanding for 
 their explanation the theory that the lung-breathing mammal 
 has arisen from the gill-breathing ancestor of old times. 
 
 But not rudimentary and functionless organs alone are 
 the points of this evidence for transformation. All ho- 
 mologies, in so far as they are not necessary to the function 
 of the part especially, point in the same direction. That 
 homology does not and will not fit with analogy I use the 
 words purely in their morphological sense has always been 
 the stumbling stone in the way of biological speculation, 
 whenever the latter attempts a theory of the rationale of 
 form. Goethe, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and Lamarck all dis- 
 cuss the matter, and it has often been studied since their 
 day. As they stood helpless before it, so do we. It may 
 be said to be a great part of the chief of our problems. It 
 is the point at which the doctrine of design and every philo- 
 sophical study of the teleological development of the in- 
 dividual breaks down. The structure of the organism is 
 not to be accounted for as having been determined for its 
 functions. Hartmann's unconscious, if it had made this 
 organism, would not have gone out of its way to follow a 
 type of structure which is not necessary to the functions 
 which it has to fulfil ; it would not have combined two 
 patterns in its work, one the morphological pattern, hav- 
 ing a hundred points of resemblance to a type, although 
 those points are not pertinent to the actual functions of the 
 species, and the other the pattern of structure as it is 
 
4O PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 organic and necessary to the functions of the whole body. 
 For these two patterns do not fit together. 
 
 Now the morphological homologies have often been com- 
 pared to the mere whim of an artificer who has pleasure in 
 following a certain type, making the best of it, as it were, 
 for the present purpose, modifying every element and pro- 
 portion in it, yet forsaking it wholly at no point. That 
 whim must not be confused with the efficiency of the arti- 
 ficer in making every part suitable to every other part and 
 to the destiny of the whole object of his art. His caprice 
 may not interfere with his efficiency, but the latter does, 
 at least, not require the former. A man we are to suppose 
 for the moment would be quite as good and quite as 
 possible an organism, although he had no vestigial parts in 
 adult life, and passed through no vestigial phases in em- 
 bryogeny. For these are of the morphological pattern and 
 do not belong to the physiological pattern, in so far, at least, 
 as we know or have conceived of the latter. Now the con- 
 ception of the artificer as mingled efficiency and caprice 
 has been loudly condemned, chiefly on this ground, that 
 the caprice does not belong to the efficiency, and that 
 the metaphor of the artificer had reference only to his 
 efficiency. 
 
 It is, however, interesting to see that the doctrine of 
 common descent has not eliminated this difficulty. It is 
 not too much to say that what is inherited is inherited and 
 worked out in the individual by processes which all affect 
 one another. The morphological pattern arises out of the 
 germ together with the physiological pattern, and it is no 
 more possible to say that any point in the former is merely 
 inherited than it is to regard functional modifications of the 
 type as merely inherited by themselves. The endeavour of 
 true science would be to see the two patterns in one and 
 not to ascribe a different origin to each. If the adapted- 
 ness of parts to one another (that is, the efficiency of the 
 artificer) be due to their functional relations in ontogeny, 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 4 1 
 
 the morphological structure of the individual in its every 
 point (that is, the caprice of the artificer) must be in func- 
 tional relations with the rest. We cannot make the whale's 
 muscles adapted, and make of its baby teeth mere rudiments 
 merely inherited. They all grew up together from the germ, 
 and if the teeth had no necessary place in the whole life, we 
 may safely say that they would not be there, however many 
 generations of toothed ancestors had swum about in the 
 water catching insects. In other words, in so far as the 
 development of the individual and inheritance are concerned, 
 there is no such thing as a vestigial or functionless structure. 
 And we cannot admit that there are such portions of an 
 organism as have no other reason for them, and therefore must 
 be ascribed to the inertia of mere inheritance. Are the gill 
 slits of the embryo there simply out of old habit, simply 
 because the ancestors millions of years ago had them ? Or 
 are they there because they are a necessary feature in 
 one moment of the development of the mammalian form ? 
 
 In a word, the mark of the artificer's capricious adher- 
 ence to type, the functionless structure of mere inheritance, 
 or the morphological pattern in so far as it seems unneces- 
 sary to the physiological pattern, is to be regarded as in 
 truth as efficient, as functional, and as necessary as anything 
 else in the organism. And when it is so regarded, I think 
 that morphological homology ceases to yield immediate 
 evidence of community of descent, or that kind of evidence 
 which it is at present supposed to yield. It is conceivable 
 that there may be reasons why different groups of animals 
 should present homologies either in the adult or the 
 embryonic image, and that those reasons may be such as to 
 render unnecessary the theory of a common descent. But 
 in any case, those reasons are prior to that reason of the 
 mere inheritance from past times. One may well wonder 
 at those who talk so fluently of the presence of a structure 
 in the unimaginable past as an adequate reason for the 
 presence of its very considerable "remains" in the descen- 
 
42 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 dant of our day and that although, on their own showing, 
 the race is continually presenting variations, and the struc- 
 ture in question is unnecessary to the other parts of the 
 organism. How, in their organism, which is but a collec- 
 tion of qualities put together (zusammengesetzt), shall a use- 
 less organ persist through ages of which history has only 
 seen a day ? For the " rudiment " has run the gauntlet of 
 variation in every generation, and of the "struggle of parts" 
 in every ontogeny, together with the cessation of natural 
 selection and use inheritance and I know not how many 
 other fostering principles. Yet through these ages it has 
 been jogging along somehow among the other parts of an 
 organism to which it has no relation of necessity or function 
 how? 
 
 If, on the other hand, we find some meaning in the 
 relation of parts as necessary to one another, we find at the 
 same time some difficulty in conceiving that any and every 
 kind of organism can exist. If we are content to regard the 
 organic differences as externally put together, each having a 
 separate external significance of its own, then no considera- 
 tions of possibility will stand in the way of an unreserved 
 acceptance of the doctrine of descent. It would be un- 
 profitable to discuss the matter, for the argument would be 
 the mere balancing of one set of conjectures against another. 
 But I do not think that those whose sole method is conjec- 
 ture have sufficiently considered that although the ancient and 
 modern species which we know those, namely, which are 
 at the ends of the branches of the supposed tree of descent 
 have proved their possibility ', yet those hypothetical forms 
 which are in the course of the branches have not made that 
 proof. It may be said that some at least of the ancient 
 forms which we know are in the course of branches, and not 
 at their ends that, again, is merely a matter for conjecture 
 but such is not the case at any rate in the great majority 
 of palseontological organisms. And if modern species are 
 thought to have descended from known ancient forms, 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 43 
 
 the possibility of the intermediate forms remains a question. 
 " Modification " is a satisfactory answer only so long as you 
 do not go into the steps of its progress, and the impercep- 
 tibility of its degrees does not really hide the fact that there 
 is a great space between first and last a space which has 
 to be filled with possible and viable creatures, " chords of 
 nature/' as the phrase goes. Instances, which seem to me 
 quite insuperable, are, the modification of branchial ap- 
 pendages of insects into wings, the gradual acquirement of 
 wings by reptiles to become birds, the assumption of a land 
 life by aquatic animals, and the acquirement of the faculty 
 of " complete metamorphosis " by insects. On the whole, 
 the evidence from classification and from embryology in 
 favour of the transformation of species is not convincing, 
 while considerations of possibility raise insuperable objec- 
 tions. 
 
 The evidence from palaeontology is of a different nature. 
 It reveals that species have succeeded one another on the 
 face of the earth in the order of their organisation. And here 
 there enters what is known as " the imperfection of the 
 geological record," which has obliterated all traces of the 
 vast majority of the supposed ancestral and intermediate 
 forms. It would be impossible for anyone but a professed 
 geologist to estimate the value which should be given to 
 that imperfection, and so to judge how much one ought to 
 infer from the absence from the rocks of great numbers of 
 steps in the transformations. So much use is made of 
 this imperfection of the record by the arguments in sup- 
 port of the transformation of species, that one becomes 
 suspicious of it because of its very convenience. What is 
 left of the record does, however, give the succession, though 
 not the transformation, and since it is impossible to conceive 
 of any other origin for the successive species, one must 
 simply suppose that each arose, by modification, from 
 those which preceded it, and that some of the latter 
 have been lost and others preserved. 
 
44 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 Two of the most significant recent tendencies of bio- 
 logical speculation should be mentioned. The great facility 
 with which evolutionary theory explained organic forms was 
 largely due to the unlimited allowance of time for each 
 change, and to the belief that such changes took place 
 " imperceptibly," " gradually," " by degrees/'' With ad- 
 vancing research the time which can be allowed has become 
 more or less definitely limited, and some have conjectured 
 that the allowance of time is insufficient for the various 
 changes, unless the rate of change was formerly vastly 
 superior to that of any such changes of which we have 
 knowledge at the present day. I cannot judge of such 
 conjectures, both because I do not know what the data for 
 them are, and because the present rate of change appears to 
 be nil. And, on the other hand, the highest authority on 
 variation regards the changes as having taken place, not 
 continuously and imperceptibly, but per saltum. T Again, the 
 doctrine of descent is entirely based on the analogical 
 similarities of species, which are represented as degrees of 
 relationship. But not only is an agreement as to the actual 
 relationships of forms in a great number of cases absent, 
 but a polyphyletic origin has been ascribed, in more than 
 one case, to the species in a group. Whenever that is the 
 case we have to do with such a degree and such a kind of 
 similarity among the species concerned as leads to their 
 classification together ; yet that similarity is independent of 
 the supposed relationship in descent. These movements of 
 biological speculation appear to be of the highest significance 
 in relation to the doctrine of organic evolution, and to be 
 such as to increase its difficulties, as well as to limit its 
 efficiency in explanation. 
 
 When its spurious significance has been removed from 
 the transformation of species, the evidence for that process 
 is partly purely conjectural, partly contradictory, and wholly 
 
 1 Mr. Bateson. 
 
METHODS OF BIOLOGY. 45 
 
 difficult to estimate. But the hypothesis stands firm on an 
 overwhelming analogy with the origins of other systems ; 
 and whoever should deny it as a fact would find it difficult 
 to say where species came from, if they did not come from 
 one another, and, ultimately, from the slime " in some warm 
 little pond." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 THE first postulate of the systematic biology is, that the 
 qualities of the individual are separate constituent elements 
 of which the organism is the total sum. The qualities are 
 thus independent of one another as regards their signifi- 
 cance, maintenance, development in the individual, existence 
 as latent, inheritance and variation, and acquirement by 
 the race. This postulate at once demands and makes 
 possible the theories of the anthropomorphic agents in the 
 individual, and the doctrines of adaptation by the transfor- 
 mation of species. 
 
 The fact of its authority over the biological systems may 
 be found in the open statement of the doctrine by the more 
 critical theorists, and it may also be found as implied in the 
 work of others, and especially in certain definite conceptions 
 and arguments which arise out of it. And I shall seek it 
 in these various ways, beginning with the most notable 
 examples of its dogmatic assertion. 
 
 De Vries, in his work entitled " Intracellular Pangenesis," 
 opens his argument, as is rarely done in biology, with a 
 clear statement of method. He at once finds it necessary 
 to make an exact definition of the nature of organic 
 qualities and of their significance to the individual, and 
 bases the whole matter upon a frank statement of our postu- 
 late. The following words, taken from his opening pages, 
 could not be more clear upon the matter : 
 
 " Among the many advantages which have given to the 
 doctrine of descent so great a significance for the investi- 
 
 46 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 47 
 
 gation of living nature, a foremost place must be given to 
 the shaking of the old conception of the species. For 
 formerly they treated every species as a unity, and the sum 
 of the specific qualities as an image having unity (einheit- 
 liches Bild}. But an examination of specific characters in 
 the light of the doctrine of descent soon shows that they 
 are put together out of single factors which are more or 
 less independent of one another. Almost every one of the 
 latter is found in many species ; and their changing, group- 
 ing and combination with the rarer factors, conditions the 
 extraordinary manifoldness of the organic world. Even the 
 simplest comparison of the different organisms leads, under 
 this point of view, to the conviction of the composite nature 
 of the characters of species. Thus the power of producing 
 chlorophyll, and of decomposing carbon dioxide in the 
 light by means of it, is plainly to be considered a unity 
 which gives its peculiar stamp to a great part of the vege- 
 table kingdom, but is wanting in many groups distributed 
 through the system, and is, therefore, combined with other 
 factors of plant nature in no inseparable manner." 
 
 After other instances of the special formation of chemical 
 substances, the author proceeds as follows : 
 
 " In like manner we must also assume the possibility of 
 the separation of the morphological specific characters. It 
 is true that morphology has not yet nearly reached the 
 point at which it could complete such an analysis for every 
 individual case. But the same leaf form and the same 
 coarser and finer serrations of the edge of the leaf repeat 
 themselves in many species, and even our common ter- 
 minology shows that the images of all leaf forms are put 
 together out of a comparatively small number of simpler 
 qualities. It would be superfluous to add many examples, 
 for any one can easily find them for himself. It is only 
 important to accustom oneself so thoroughly to this con- 
 ception that one ever sees clearly into the compound for- 
 mation of the image out of its individual parts. It is then 
 
48 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY, 
 
 plain that the character of every individual species is put 
 together out of many hereditary qualities, by far the greater 
 number of which reappear in countless other species. And 
 although so great a number of such factors is necessary for 
 the construction of a single species, that we almost draw 
 back from the consequences of our analysis, yet it is clear 
 on the other hand that the number of individual hereditary 
 qualities which is sufficient for the construction of all 
 organisms is small in comparison with the number of 
 species. Every species thus appears to us as a very com- 
 plex image, but the whole organic world appears as the 
 result of countless different combinations and permutations 
 of relatively few factors. These factors are the units 
 (Einheiten) which the science of inheritance has to investi- 
 gate. Just as physics and chemistry refer to molecules and 
 atoms, so must the biological sciences press through to 
 these unities, in order to explain the living world out of 
 their combinations." 
 
 Further, the development of the race in history is to be 
 ascribed to the addition of new unit qualities to those 
 which have already been put together to form the species. 
 " In every case we see how one and the same hereditary 
 quality may come to be bound up with the most different 
 other hereditary qualities, and how, by means of these 
 exceptionally varied unions, the individual specific char- 
 acters may come into being." And the same explanation 
 is made for variation. "Almost every quality can vary 
 independently of the others." 
 
 The qualities themselves do not, according to de Vries, 
 form any such unity as was supposed before the " doctrine 
 of descent shook the old conception of species." The 
 specific form, that is, the individual, is no longer to be 
 conceived as having even any morphological unity. The 
 separate measurements of form do not exist in proportions 
 such as were held to be the very meaning of form. The 
 various qualities or differences are only "factors," which 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 49 
 
 are externally held together so as to give the delusive appear- 
 ance of a unity in difference. Everything which can be dis- 
 tinguished from the rest, and which may exist in individuals 
 of different species, is itself a complete thing. It, and not 
 the organism, is the true individual. It is the unit to which 
 biological investigation must advance. 
 
 " Even our common terminology," says de Vries, " shows 
 that the images of all leaf forms are put together out of a 
 comparatively small number of simpler qualities." His 
 meaning in this seems to be clear. To qualify an organism 
 in such-and-such a 'way, is to distinguish one separate 
 thing existing among other separate things. And a true 
 classification, if we could only get it, would be a description 
 of these " comparatively few factors," supplemented by a 
 description of their distribution among organisms. Thus 
 redness exists in these plants, hairiness in those, and a 
 height of six foot in those others. And such separately 
 existing and, to physiology, accidentally combined qualities, 
 are the real individual unities, which we must, in order to 
 biology, dissociate from the accidental colonies in which 
 they live in a sort of symbiosis. In a word, the abstract 
 universal is the real unity, and the concrete universal is only 
 a puzzling complication of our problem. And classification 
 should not proceed by the analogical comparison of organ- 
 isms, but by the enumeration of these abstract universals. 
 
 A more subtle and insidious approach to the same 
 necessary postulate for hypothetical systems of biology is 
 given by Naegeli, in his great " Mechanisch-physiologische 
 Theorie der Abstammungslehre." He is impelled to create, 
 since he cannot find, a sphere in which all organic qualities 
 should be units, separate from one another, and capable of 
 enumeration. And, when he has created it, he regards it 
 as the true organism, of which that which we know is only 
 the baffling and delusive appearance. I quote from the 
 section entitled " Idioplasm as vehicle of hereditary 
 potential qualities (Anlagen)' 
 
50 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 " The comparison of different organisms suffers not only 
 from our want of knowledge, but also from the absence, due 
 to dissimilarity of organisation, of a common measure which 
 should assign the value and therewith the true difference 
 (of qualities). Thus we are unable to compare the fungus, 
 the fern, the pine, and the fruit tree otherwise than by 
 pointing out that in one of these plants there is a quality 
 (Merkmal) which does not occur in another, and that in one 
 case it has this nature (Beschaffenheit) and in the other 
 case that other nature. But the difference can in no case 
 be expressed as quantity, and thus as plainly presentable 
 magnitude. Therefore all systematic distinction and estima- 
 tion is more or less arbitrary, and all inference from them, 
 for the purposes of phylogenetic theory, is hypothetical. 
 
 " There is, however, a condition in which the qualities 
 which cannot be exactly compared and estimated are elim- 
 inated, and in which all organisms are reduced to a similar 
 form and structure. It is the first and unicellular stage of 
 development, for in the ovum all animals and plants are 
 similar. But the ovum contains all essential (wesentlich) 
 qualities just as much as the developed organism, and or- 
 ganisms differ from one another not less as ova than they 
 do in the developed condition. The species is as completely 
 contained in the hen's egg as in the hen, and the hen's egg 
 is as different from the frog's egg as is the hen from the 
 frog. If it seems otherwise to us it is only because many 
 distinguishing qualities may be seized in the hen and the 
 frog, while the distinguishing qualities in the ovum are 
 hidden from us. 
 
 " The states of the ova are the short beginnings of the 
 individual histories of development, and as such may be 
 compared, as it were, with short segments of different 
 curves. The short segments appear to be all similar and to 
 be all straight, although in them the essence and the 
 mathematical formula of the different curves is as sharply 
 expressed as when they have been lengthened so as to show 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 51 
 
 their characteristic differences even to the naked eye. 
 Therefore the ova should be the true objects of comparison, 
 for they would give us all the differences in the same form, 
 and therefore capable of being given in terms of measurement" 
 
 In this short argument Naegeli formally reduces the 
 qualitative differences of the organism to differences which 
 can be measured, and are therefore units and separate from 
 one another. For if they are in this hypothetical manner 
 qualitatively similar to one another, they can only be 
 distinguished from one another, as Naegeli goes on to 
 distinguish them, as numerically different things. We 
 have been conducted to the germ in order to the demonstra- 
 tion of this state of the qualities, but when that has been 
 accomplished the author freely treats of an existence of 
 this kind for them in the succeeding stages of development. 
 Each quality and each part is referred, not to the others, 
 but to its " vehicle." And the qualities, separate from one 
 another and measurable, in the germ, are not the qualities 
 of the germ, but are the qualities of germ and every suc- 
 ceeding stage as Anlagen, or as actual existences answering 
 to possible qualities. It is not necessary to go further 
 into these theories in order to show how, when they men- 
 tion the matter at all, they immediately proceed under some 
 powerful impulse to describe organic qualities as constituent 
 units which are numerable, and which do not find their 
 ground of explanation in one another. 
 
 Now, it is evident that when once such a point of view 
 is given, observation under it will do nothing to correct 
 or alter it. It is certainly necessary to such an author 
 as de Vries to give some explanation of the obvious fact 
 that many qualities vary together and are inherited together, 
 but it is not difficult to invent a theory to explain this 
 binding together of the separate unit factors into groups. 
 For it belongs to the method of such theories to ignore 
 any examples of what they call the correlation of qualities, 
 except those which are only occasional and those which 
 
52 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 arrest attention because they are not understood. For 
 " common terminology " is the guide as to what is one 
 quality and what is more than one. And that criterion is 
 untrustworthy, because, when it sees two qualities which are 
 invariably combined, or which even have an intelligible re- 
 lation to one another, it very rightly calls them one. In 
 fact, we have not any serious attempt to obtain a true 
 analysis of the organism, on the principle of de Vries, just 
 because "common terminology " is the final arbiter. 
 
 And it is the same guide which leads our theorists to look 
 on description as the analysis of the individual into what 
 are practically subordinate individuals. A thorough at- 
 tempt to complete the analysis and to count the con- 
 stituent factors would at once clear away this postulate from 
 the science. But, in fact, the postulate is really offered to 
 us as an account of the methods of observation ; it is a 
 thinly disguised .psychological account of the way in which 
 our impressions are formed, and no theory of the nature of 
 organisms. It is an attempt to justify ( ' common termino- 
 logy," and no attempt to penetrate behind it. And with such 
 a theory as that, observation has certainly nothing to do. 
 
 But what qualities come under the definition of this 
 postulate ? Are they merely morphological, or merely 
 synchronous qualities ? We shall find that, in fact, every 
 difference everything which can be distinguished from the 
 rest of the organism is to be a separate constituent 
 element. The stages of the development of the individual 
 are to be discrete, and without intelligible relations to one 
 another, no less than all the qualities which may exist 
 together at one time. Morphological and physiological 
 qualities are thus independent among themselves and of 
 one another. Even latent qualities have a separate exist- 
 ence from the rest. Alternative qualities do, in mere fact, 
 appear instead of one another, and do not appear together, 
 but they are not on that account related to one another. 
 And the parent is unrelated to its offspring, for they are 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 53 
 
 both the mere puppets of the anthropomorphic agent. We 
 have to do with a doctrine of organic differences, as differ- 
 ences, and without much respect to what differences they 
 are. And this doctrine may be seen in many common 
 biological conceptions. 
 
 Perhaps the postulate is associated with no theory so 
 closely as it is with what is known as the cell theory, and 
 with those conclusions which are drawn from it for biology. 
 For those conclusions are of such a kind as is not warranted 
 by the mere fact that the body is throughout made up of 
 cells and of their products, and that its growth, its repairs, 
 and its hyperplasias are due to the multiplication and 
 differentiation of those elements. No one would deny the 
 general truth of the statement that there is nothing living 
 which is not one cell or a colony of cells, but one would be 
 slow to admit that the statement^, for biology, at all an 
 adequate or even an important one in relation to the ex- 
 pression of the determination of form. And I can only 
 derive its great popularity with the hypothetical biology 
 from the fact that it may be, and commonly is, so stated as 
 to evade the problem of the form of the individual alto- 
 gether. It is possible so to insist on the multitude, on the 
 similarity, and on the independence of cells, as to deny the 
 supreme individuality of the body. This whole organism, 
 it is said, is but a colony of these, the true individuals, and 
 the secret of its form is to be found in their habits of growth, 
 reproduction, and differentiation. And so the question of 
 the whole and the parts is removed from the sphere of the 
 body, in which we have some opportunity of studying it, 
 only to be repeated in the microscopic sphere of the in- 
 dividual cells. But, in the latter sphere, the question does 
 not really come before us, so that the whole form of the 
 argument does no more than to evade it altogether. For 
 the cells, in their turn, are regarded as the mere stones out 
 of which the living edifice is, externally, put together. 
 
 The point of view is almost universal. Perhaps Virchow's 
 
54 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 vigorous advocacy has done most to strengthen it. He 
 goes so far as to say, for instance, " If it is possible to 
 separate certain elements or groups of elements from the 
 association of the human body without their ceasing to show 
 the features of life and to maintain themselves, it follows 
 that this association is not, in the traditional sense, a unity, 
 but is a company, or rather, a society." (Virch. Arch. f. 
 path. Anat. u. Phys. IV. 378.) And again, "Every animal 
 shows itself to be a sum of vital unities, every one of which 
 manifests all the characteristics of life. . . . The structural 
 composition of a body of considerable size, a so-called in- 
 dividual, always represents a kind of social arrangement of 
 parts an arrangement of a social kind, in which a number 
 of individual beings are mutually dependent, but in such a 
 way that each element has its own special action, and, even 
 though it derive its stimulus to activity from other parts, 
 yet alone effects, the actual performance of its duties." 
 (Virch. Cell. Path. 13.) Huxley, again, calls the body " an 
 aggregation of quasi independent cells," and regards such a 
 definition as a serious aid to the solution of the problem of 
 form. And Darwin introduces his provisional theory of 
 pangenesis by a well-known passage to the same effect. 
 Plainly, the matter is considered as of great importance in 
 this connection. 
 
 We have abundant evidence of the same point of view in 
 the ever recurring metaphor taken from human society. 
 For as the form of the latter is given is the cooperation of 
 so many millions of separate and independent persons, who 
 are to be the true social individuals, so is the form of the 
 body to be given as the sum of so many millions of " quasi 
 independent cells " ; and thus the politics of the extreme 
 radical are transferred to the organism. But the instruments 
 of the constitution, the institutions of the country, the 
 character of public opinion, the price of bread, and the 
 pieties and observances of our common life are the features 
 of society; and we are not our own, but are of their creation. 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 55 
 
 The "quasi independent" man goes to prison. As an 
 abstract unit, a man has nothing of society in him at all. 
 Even if cells were as independent of one another as I am of 
 my neighbour, one might well refuse to give any value to 
 the metaphor. Whatever else it may illustrate, it certainly 
 does not illustrate the organism as a mere "sum of vital 
 unities " ; and if it is seriously considered, it tends rather to 
 support the conception of the body as " in the traditional 
 sense a unity" than the reverse. 
 
 The cell is an individual, and as such it must be con- 
 sidered, as Virchow puts it, as alone effecting the actual 
 performance of its duties, on receipt of a stimulus from 
 without. The changes which proceed in it and from it are 
 thus to be considered as activity called out by occasion, 
 rather than as effect resulting from cause which contains the 
 direct reason for the effect. And in activity is, to quote 
 Bunge, the " mystery of life "; or, in other words, activity is 
 the mark of individuality. Now, if the individuality of the 
 body is to be slurred over, and all its problems are to be 
 answered by a formal reference to the cell and its activities, 
 we have a right to expect that some architectural principle 
 should be found in the cell itself. Each of these elements, 
 since they are not put together by an artificer, and since in 
 them alone there is to be found the secret of form, must 
 have, in some way, the form of the whole in its own abstract 
 and independent existence. But I find no such attempt to 
 fill up the conception of cells as anthropomorphic agents. 
 The stimulus for the cell comes from the rest of the body. 
 Its food, its conditions of tension and stress, its temperature, 
 its very form, the periods of its divisions, and its wanderings 
 these are all not its own but from the whole, as soon as we 
 come to serious research. Elements removed from the 
 body do not maintain themselves ; they must be returned, 
 before they die, to normal conditions. It is, in the end, 
 with the whole, and not with the cell> that physiology and 
 pathology are occupied ; and one may give its due to 
 
56 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 cytology, and yet doubt whether its exquisite researches 
 can throw light on the economies of the body. In a word, 
 we are not likely to find, within an individual abstracted 
 from a system in which it is only an element, as thoroughly 
 passive as it is active, the principle of the architecture of 
 the whole system. " Of this organisation itself as such 
 that is, of the mechanical apparatus it presents to us the 
 microscope tells us nothing whatever. The microscope 
 only enables us to see a single cell, a single germinal particle 
 in connection with more or less of its own formed material 
 a single coral, so to speak, and the polype that died into 
 it : it tells us nothing whatever of the vast machine which 
 these polypes have all unconsciously built up with their 
 coral. The mighty and complex frame of man is, after all, 
 despite its innumerable parts, a unity; all these parts but go 
 towards that unity, are sublated into it. Now, what of all 
 that does microscopic observation tell us ? Why, simply 
 nothing. Myriads of miserable Egyptians carried stones to 
 the Pyramid; but no microscopic watching of any of these, 
 stone and all, would ever explain the Pyramid itself its 
 many to a one." (Dr. Stirling: "As regards Protoplasm," 
 p. 75.) I suppose that the cells of the body are at least as 
 intimately dependent on one another as the planets are bound 
 together in their system, yet who would propose to call that 
 system " an aggregation of quasi independent units ? " Who, 
 again, would seriously treat of society in that way ? But, in 
 fact, the metaphor from society lies so easily in its place in 
 these arguments, only because society is conceived as no 
 system, but as practically anarchical, as indeed it is from the 
 standpoint of the abstract individual man. To these argu- 
 ments, " society" means a crowd rather than a unity; it is 
 a collective and not a singular term. And in so far as it is 
 so used, it is not a pertinent analogy for the unity of the 
 organism. 
 
 Individuality is shown in those internal proportions and 
 adjustments of which individual cells are the mere materials; 
 
{ UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 OF 
 
 POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 57 
 
 and the more free and independent those elements appear 
 to be, the less they have to do with the architecture of the 
 body. And this is the meaning of Dr. Stirling's paradox, 
 that " it is the so-called dead formed material that alone 
 truly lives, and not the so-called living germinal matter that 
 is assumed to die into it." While research into the fine 
 structure and the functions of these cells gives us light on 
 the formation of that fragment of the body in which they 
 occur, we do not and cannot gain from it any information as 
 to the principles of the building of the body. 
 
 An interesting example of the way in which the doctrine 
 of the independence of parts is commonly regarded as of 
 value for the explanation of the form of the individual, is 
 given in Roux's ingenious theory contained in his " Struggle 
 of Parts." In amplifying the conception which was given 
 by Thiersch of the histogenetic equilibrium, Roux deals 
 successively with the struggle of molecules, cells, tissues 
 and organs, and, in a somewhat Darwinian manner, derives 
 the form of the body from the variation of its elements, or 
 metaplasia, and from their conflict with one another. In so 
 far as the adaptations of individuals to the environment may 
 be explained by such hypotheses, the adaptations of part to 
 part within one organism are of course susceptible of the 
 same form of explanation. And Roux must be credited with 
 one good service ; in that he pointed out that the structures 
 of the individual do not arise as it were by the miracle of 
 inheritance, but arise by processes of action and reaction 
 on one another. But because the processes of his hypo- 
 thesis were not those which are known to research, but were 
 the external action upon one another of what can only be 
 called separate individuals, the theory must be condemned 
 for dealing only formally with hypothetical processes and 
 hypothetical, self-determined, abstract agents. For, if the 
 matter came to be one of detailed observation, it would 
 be impossible to judge on what principle the conflict- 
 ing individual parts should be limited from one another 
 
58 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 as separate individuals. One might choose any one of a 
 hundred ways of dividing the body, and be equally right 
 in any one of them. There must be some curious 
 fascination about this conception of struggle, that it 
 should be introduced into the explanation of the parts 
 of that which is the most perfect and unique unity we 
 know. 
 
 The independence of qualities is further implied in the 
 ordinary biological conception of variation. For it is 
 commonly supposed that one quality may vary without an 
 accompanying variation through the whole body ; and it is 
 mainly upon that supposition that the theories of organic 
 evolution depend. For their success in the explanation of 
 organic form depends upon the implied unlimited possibility 
 of this and that quality being combined for various purposes 
 in one organism. Now, if a certain change in the image 
 may take place without causing and being caused by other 
 changes answering to it, and if one state of the organism 
 has thus no reciprocal relation with its other states, then 
 indeed we may at once give up the unity of the organism, 
 as Virchow or de Vries would do, as an antiquated delusion. 
 For then an animal or plant will appear to us as a collection 
 of qualities, which, except in certain rare cases which are 
 specially provided for and defined, neither imply nor need 
 one another. 
 
 Certainly, to a superficial view, it would appear as 
 though there were such a thing as uncorrelated variation. 
 Flowers may have a constant form, and yet vary greatly in 
 colour. Changes of form may even take place, in some 
 species, upon one side of the body and not upon the other. 
 Again, the males of a species may vary in certain respects 
 and in certain directions, although those variations have ap- 
 parently no corresponding or correlated representatives in 
 the females. And many examples of a variation of one 
 period of the development of the individual, apparently with- 
 out influence upon other stages, will occur to the reader, 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 59 
 
 Indeed, in the greater number of cases, variations would 
 appear to be of one difference alone, and to be without 
 effect on the whole. 
 
 It does not, however, follow on that account that we 
 can regard the differences as in reality thus independent 
 of one another, in their quantitative and qualitative changes. 
 If one flower has been held to imply and to make necessary 
 the whole world, we may expect to find that the parts of the 
 flower are at least not less dependent on one another than 
 the flower is on the rest. And it remains that we should 
 see whether the identity of the body is such that a changed 
 part means a changed whole or no, and whether we are not 
 merely puzzling ourselves with phrases when we speak of 
 independently varying qualities. 
 
 It is useful to remember, in the first place, that variation 
 is not, as our biologists make, it, a process of its own and 
 by itself, which may take place in this part or in that, and 
 work in this way or in that. It is not a principle working 
 on an otherwise static image, or a change in a body, which, 
 except for "variation," does not change. We may give up 
 at once the hope for a physiology of variation, as a special 
 branch of physiology, and for a mechanism for variation, 
 that should be discovered among other cytological elements. 
 To theories which ascribe to inheritance such a process and 
 mechanism apart from and beside the other processes and 
 structures of life, variation is, of course, just a special process 
 and a special provision of mechanism within that of inherit- 
 ance. Now, such a process of variation or mechanism for 
 variation both can and must have effect in one part or 
 quality and not in another ; and it would be astonishing if 
 it worked in all the differences at once, still working so as to 
 suit them to one another. For if it should thus adapt its 
 various performances to one another, that mechanism, being 
 itself a part among others, would be effecting, by its own ab- 
 stract and uniformed activity, a result of the kind which we 
 have come to ascribe only to the cooperation of all the 
 
60 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 parts. And of those parts no single one can, in this unique 
 respect, receive a pre-eminence. 
 
 But the body, in which we remark a variation, has grown 
 up from its beginnings. It has not remained the same 
 body, changed only in this respect or in that by an organ 
 for variation and its functions. It has come, through 
 changes in which every trace of the typical image has been 
 lost, to a stage at which it wholly resembles the parent or 
 type, except in respect of certain points. These nine 
 points are common to it and to the parent, but that tenth 
 point is not common to both, but is a variation. We can- 
 not question that some of the points are quite in common, 
 and that others, abruptly and, as it were, independently 
 from the rest, are not at all in common. But the question 
 comes to be of what nature those " points " are, whether the 
 varied points are such as that we should get in them the 
 whole difference between the one individual and the other, 
 and therefore, whether we are warranted in saying that this 
 and that quality have varied in complete independence of 
 the rest. 
 
 The individual is complete and perfect, and there is no 
 variation in it from some supposed form within it which has 
 been expressly departed from or altered. Its variations are 
 simply points of difference in the analogical comparison of 
 it and the type. That comparison selects its points of 
 similarity and of unlikeness, and does not by any means 
 take in all the points which would be included in the ex- 
 haustive anatomical, histological, and physiological exam- 
 ination of the single creature. It selects them, further, on a 
 principle ; it has a criterion and a definite method for 
 the comparison of organisms ; and from that method it 
 cannot escape. It does not take its points at random, but 
 chooses them as having a certain significance to the organ- 
 ism ; and it is in relation to that significance that they are 
 compared. Organs are compared, not heterogeneous 
 masses taken at random from the body. Morphological 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 6 1 
 
 comparison is made in respect of definite structural propor- 
 tions which have a recognised place in the whole image ; 
 they are compared as proportions, and not as single 
 measurements. The comparison of colour on the wings of 
 insects has for its "points " definite elements in a pattern. 
 In speaking of inheritance and of variation, you name this 
 part, this organ, this bone, this tissue, this spot of colour, and 
 all of these points for comparison are chosen because each 
 of them has a definite significance to the morphological or 
 the functional unity of the organism. You are always com- 
 paring, as it has well been said, in reference to a standard, 
 and on a principle. It follows, therefore, that you do not 
 succeed, however many points you raise, in comparing the 
 organisms with which you have to do, in all respects, just 
 because you are always comparing them in respect of some- 
 what. There are differences and similarities between your 
 specimens of such a kind that you would call them irrele- 
 vant to biological comparison, and, indeed, it never occurs 
 to you to bring them up. 
 
 Since the comparisons which have been made the basis 
 of the biological doctrines of variation are mainly, if not 
 altogether, morphological, the fact that two organisms may 
 differ in one point of this kind without differing in others of 
 the same kind, has become enlarged into the statement 
 that two organisms may differ in one point without differing 
 in any others whatever. And, though this is not the most 
 important fallacy in the supposition that qualities vary 
 independently of one another, we must not forget that a 
 variation even in colour probably means a profound 
 functional variation throughout the whole body. I do not 
 mean to say that it will ever be possible to tell what altera- 
 tions in different organs, and what changes in the chemistry 
 of the blood, and what thousand other variations go 
 to the making of a change in a spot on an insect's 
 wing, but I certainly think that such an intimate nexus 
 between "points" in different kinds is supported by 
 
62 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 observation, and must be at least formally allowed for 
 in theory. 
 
 The matter of colour alone would furnish innumerable 
 examples of variations which, although apparently inde- 
 pendent and unaccompanied by other changes, are yet due 
 to a profound change in the whole organism. It would not 
 be easy to give such examples from what is ordinarily called 
 variation, because that term includes only new associations 
 of qualities which do not change in the individual in ques- 
 tion, and cannot be made the subject of experiment ; the 
 variation, in other words, is not in the individual, so that it 
 can be observed, but is between two individuals, so that it 
 eludes us. But the association of colour changes with other 
 physiological changes is well seen in the history of many in- 
 dividuals, and the connection can hardly be of a different 
 nature in one case from what it is in the other. There are 
 remarkable colour changes which are associated with the 
 maturation of the reproductive glands, and which may even 
 come and go with the seasonal reproductive changes. The 
 colour difference which is associated with the other sex 
 differences in many species, and which disappears with the 
 removal of the reproductive organs, is an instance of a 
 quality which does not stand by itself, but which is in- 
 timately linked to differences in respect of innumerable 
 other points ; and all these differences are one difference, 
 and the difference is the difference of the whole. Instinct, 
 temperament, sensibility, blood, skeleton, brain, size, in these 
 respects and in many others do sexes definitely differ; yet it 
 is one difference, the difference of the whole. They differ, 
 not merely in respect of this and that, but altogether ; 
 and however many and various are the points of difference 
 which we take, we are still not at the end of it. Again, altera- 
 tions in the quality of food will alter the colour of feathers, 
 and a chemical difference of the blood is seen to belong to 
 a colour difference in the skin. Morphological character- 
 istics among men are associated with particular character- 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 63 
 
 istics of temperament, and nutritional changes are even 
 more marked in respect of such effects. The various faces 
 of men tell us of much more -than merely of the develop- 
 ments of this or that muscle. In the end, we have to do 
 with differences throughout the whole organism. And if 
 we knew insects as we know men and women, we should 
 find every change in colour reflected through the whole 
 creature. It is just a question of how many and how con- 
 crete and significant are the points for comparison to which 
 we have access. In the case of the unity of human 
 character, of which we know most, the unity of all 
 characteristics is never questioned. One of a man's actions 
 is often enough to give you his whole self, and the differ- 
 ence of one man from another is not merely a difference in 
 respect of this or that isolated particular, but is a difference 
 of the whole unity, revealed in this or that point according 
 to the standard by which they are judged. 
 
 It is not otherwise in the case of organic variation. If 
 the colours of an animal may be changed by removal of 
 organs and by alteration of the composition of its blood, 
 we may be sure that, with a certain " variation " in the 
 organs, there goes a certain variation in colour. We may be 
 sure that the individual is a unity in respect of variation as 
 in other respects, and that when it differs from the type in 
 this or that point it differs from it throughout, with a differ- 
 ence of which the single point is, for some reason, the only 
 mark which comes to our knowledge. In a sense, there- 
 fore, there is no such thing as uncorrelated variation ; I 
 mean in the sense in which that term is in contradiction 
 with the possibility of physiology ; for so it is used by the 
 biologists, who expand it into a doctrine of variation in 
 general. 
 
 What then is the independence of differences as regards 
 variation ? For we have found that there may be only one 
 point of variation in one kind, as, for instance, that just 
 this spot of colour may be changed without any other 
 
64 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 changes, or that just these arms may be longer without 
 longer legs or longer spine. And on the other hand 
 numerous examples show that such isolated points of 
 variation carry with them the most profound changes in 
 other kinds. But the theory of the independence of 
 qualities in variation has been largely based, not on the 
 discovery that there was one point of change while all 
 other points of every kind remained similar, but on the 
 mere observation that there are points of difference, and 
 that, in spite of this variation, there are still points of simi- 
 larity. As, for instance, " though the arms are abnormally 
 long, yet the legs are normal in length," and not, " though 
 the arms are long, yet there is no other point of departure 
 from the type." Or, "different colour with similar struc- 
 ture," and not, "different colour with everything else 
 similar." 
 
 Now the independence of the varying point is just the 
 abstractness of the kind of point in question. We compare, 
 as was said above, in respect of somewhat morphological 
 pattern, colour pattern, particular function, what you will 
 but always somewhat. And the variation, or difference 
 from a certain type, of the creature in question, being 
 necessarily a difference of the whole creature, yet shows 
 itself, in reference to any particular standard of difference, 
 in all, in a few, or in no points under that standard. It is 
 thus often present in a change in one part of the particular 
 abstract pattern but not in other parts of that pattern, be- 
 cause other points of difference would be irrelevant to it, 
 in that the other parts belong to it as they are. It does not 
 seem necessary that they should all change in order to 
 belong to it, and the fact of their riot changing does not 
 seem to show that they do not belong to it or that they are 
 independent of it. The point of difference, far from being 
 an external change of one part without relation to the rest, 
 is the expression of the whole difference under one partic- 
 ular criterion, Thus what is characteristic of an individual, 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 6$ 
 
 in ordinary biological comparison, is by no means the whole 
 of it, and its characteristic difference is not its sole varia- 
 tion. Only, the rest is, for purposes of comparison, 
 irrelevant. But it is not irrelevant to physiology ; and it 
 must not be dogmatically asserted not to exist. For 
 biology pretends to rise above the mere abstract plane of 
 comparison, and to give a theory of the nature of organic 
 qualities and of classification. And, further, the apparently 
 irrelevant tends, in the progress of research, to show itself 
 relevant, and therefore to become characteristic. To a 
 child, one or two leading points in a particular man, profes- 
 sion, or institution, are characteristic, and all the rest is 
 irrelevant. As he grows older, an increasing amount of 
 these contents becomes intelligible to him as belonging 
 necessarily to the unity of each. Similarly, two flowers 
 may appear to us as differing only in number of petals or 
 only in colour. It is incredible that they should not also 
 differ throughout, and that the latter differences should not 
 necessarily belong to the first primary difference. Why, 
 then, do these other differences evade us ? Because, in so 
 far as they are in the same kind and under the same 
 criterion as the primary difference, they are included in the 
 unanalysed content of that first difference, having an intelli- 
 gible relation to it, as, to have big muscles is to have 
 prominent marks for their points of insertion, or, to have 
 long bones is to have long muscles ; and because, in so far 
 as they come under a different criterion from that of the 
 primary difference, they must also necessarily escape atten- 
 tion, not entering, in any special significance, under that 
 first criterion. If, for instance, the blood of a short man 
 were compared with that of a tall one, or if the morpho- 
 logical proportions of an albino were compared with those 
 of a dark man, I suppose that in either case we should be 
 disappointed when we tried to make out a definite differ- 
 ence, necessarily attached to the primary difference of com- 
 parison. This would be owing to the fact that we should 
 
 E 
 
66 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 be, in such cases, laying two patterns side by side, the 
 chemical and that of size in the one case, and the morpho- 
 logical and that of colour in the other, and half expecting 
 that a difference between the organisms which shows itself 
 as a tangible and significant characteristic in the one 
 scheme will show itself also as a significant characteristic 
 in the other. It is altogether unlikely that it should do 
 so. There will be a difference in that other scheme, but it 
 will not be a characteristic difference; it will not have 
 degrees answering to those of the first ; and it might well 
 be such as could not be dissociated, as the definite result 
 of the primary difference, from all the other conditions of 
 the peculiar chemistry of the blood in the one case, or the 
 peculiar morphological proportions in the other. To a 
 characteristic difference under one scheme, other differences, 
 though necessary to the former, do not correspond as 
 correlative characteristics under another scheme. And the 
 characteristics, under this second scheme, though they are 
 irrelevant to the first, are yet not unrelated to it. 
 
 The principle of uncoordinated variation is, in fact, 
 assumed as possible, merely because its adherents do not 
 often take it seriously and examine its consequences. 
 Any variation which they offer in illustration of it always 
 involves, under the same term, a host of necessary correla- 
 tions which they do not distinguish from it. Thus a 
 variation in the length of the legs is two or four coordinate 
 variations in two or four legs. If the femur is long, so 
 are the sartorius and the rectus femoris, and the sciatic 
 nerve, and if it is short, they are correlatively short with 
 it ; yet this is all called a single uncorrelated variation in the 
 length of the thigh. We do not debate about the origin 
 of each of these variations separately, because the relations 
 of necessity between them are evident, and there can be 
 no talk of independent variation except when those relations 
 are first obscure and then denied. When they are obscure 
 it would be saner to seek for them than to calculate the 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 67 
 
 chances of their all occurring together. If we are to ask 
 how the sartorius comes to vary with the femur, we may 
 also ask how it comes about that the skin fits the body, or 
 that the colour fits the skin. These correlations of varia- 
 tion are intelligible, and therefore one part is not said to 
 vary alone, nor, when the correlation is evident, is an 
 obscure biological principle called in to secure the har- 
 mony. But when the relations of a part are not fully 
 known, our ignorance is elevated into a doctrine of the 
 independent variation of parts, and when changes occur in 
 unexplained conjunction we see in it the exceptional work- 
 ing of a mysterious principle. 
 
 Darwin's instances of correlated variation are almost 
 entirely cases in which the nexus between the " points " is 
 unknown, or, as he says, " mysterious." The principle is 
 exceptional in its working ; it is not recognised as inevit- 
 able and as intelligible. And the ordinary examples of it 
 are not considered at all. He says, for instance, " Im- 
 portant changes in the embryo or larva will probably entail 
 changes in the mature animal. In monstrosities the 
 correlations between quite distinct parts are very curious ; 
 and many instances are given in Isidore, Geoffrey St. 
 Hilaire's great work on this subject. Breeders believe that 
 bony limbs are almost always accompanied by an elongated 
 head. Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical ; 
 thus cats which are entirely white and have blue eyes are 
 generally deaf; but it has been lately stated by Mr. Tait 
 that this is confined to the males. Colour and constitu- 
 tional peculiarities go together, of which many remarkable 
 cases could be given amongst animals and plants. From 
 facts collected by Heusinger, it appears that white sheep 
 and pigs are injured by certain plants, whilst dark-coloured 
 individuals escape. . . . Hairless dogs have imperfect 
 teeth; long-haired and coarse-haired animals are apt to 
 have, as is asserted, long or many horns ; pigeons with 
 feathered feet have skin between their outer toes ; pigeons 
 
63 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 with short beaks have small feet, and those with long beaks 
 large feet. Hence if a man goes on selecting, and thus 
 augmenting, any peculiarity, he will almost certainly modify 
 unintentionally other parts of the structure, owing to the 
 mysterious laws of correlation." (" Origin of Species," 
 p. 8.) 
 
 This is a museum of the most " curious " or " whimsical " 
 or " mysterious " cases one could find ; the relations of the 
 parts of monsters, the relations between colour and deaf- 
 ness, jind between colour and immunity from poisons being 
 unknown, are given a special place as instances of a special 
 principle. I do not mention the others, because they have 
 a prima facie appearance of having an intimate reciprocal 
 relationship. But they are gathered together as correlated 
 variations for one reason only, that the nexus is not under- 
 stood. Research has not proceeded so far. Therefore we 
 are to have a . nexus of a unique kind, and one, it should 
 be remarked, which does not obtain between other varia- 
 tions. For the latter are not analysed into their parts, so 
 that they appear to be units ; and they are universally 
 understood to be uncorrelated with others, so that they 
 appear to be independent units. 
 
 The difficulties with which the principle of natural selec- 
 tion has met in this matter have been great. Each 
 modification of one part is useless, even deleterious, unless 
 other parts vary also in such ways as are necessary in order 
 that they should support the first. How are we to conceive 
 that this complementary variation, in the absence of co- 
 ordinate variation, takes place ? Usually thus. Out of the 
 whole new pattern there arises, by chance, one element. 
 This remains in the species because it confers some special 
 benefit. Then, by chance, another element, which yet is 
 necessary to the first, sooner or later arises. This also is 
 retained, and so the matter proceeds until the whole 
 pattern is completed. The whole adjustment may take 
 place by imperceptible stages. But when it is seen that 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 69 
 
 elements which are necessary to one another must arise at 
 the same time, and when it is seen that the number of 
 necessary changes if we must take them as independent 
 and therefore as number is very great, the odds against 
 their all occurring simultaneously and in the right propor- 
 tions are practically infinite. "It is no reply to this," says 
 Murphy, "to say, what no doubt is abstractly true, that 
 whatever is possible becomes probable, if only time enough 
 is allowed. There are improbabilities so great that the 
 common sense of mankind treats them as impossibilities. 
 It is not, for instance, in the strictest sense of the word, im- 
 possible that a poem and a mathematical proposition should 
 be obtained by the process of shaking letters out of a box ; 
 but it is improbable to a degree that cannot be distinguished 
 from impossibility ; and the improbability of obtaining an 
 improvement in an organ, by means of several simultaneous 
 variations all occurring together, is an improbability of the 
 same kind." Yet by just this impossibility, repeated in 
 every generation, of the fortuitous simultaneous rise of 
 variations which are necessary to one another has the 
 whole world of living creatures arisen, according to that 
 biological hypothesis which has the greatest influence. I 
 wonder that, with their accustomed liberty of thought, the 
 theorists of natural selection have not announced that, by 
 a chance variation, the faculty of coordinate variation came 
 long ago into the world, and, for its manifest advantages, 
 was retained by all succeeding species by means of a special 
 granule in the nucleus. 
 
 This difficulty is emphasised in controversy by the 
 adherents of the principle of use inheritance ; but their 
 theory does not wholly avoid it. They conceive that the 
 changes which an organism experiences in its purposive re- 
 action to changing circumstance are to a certain extent 
 represented in its offspring by changes or variations of the 
 same kind. Therefore, because any one change in the 
 individual is not worked out alone, but is, in common ex- 
 
70 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 perience, functionally supported by changes which are 
 necessary to it, the variation in the offspring is not of one 
 part abstractly, but is of all the parts also which work 
 together with it. Variation is, under this theory, no sudden 
 leap in the dark : it represents merely the changes which the 
 parent has experienced. One might almost say that variation 
 does not exist for it, but that it has to do with a simple in- 
 heritance in every particular a mere growing on of the whole 
 parent. There is not in every generation a new creation of 
 a fortuitously dissimilar creature. The element of chance 
 being absent, and all changes being functionally induced, the 
 theory of use inheritance does not err to the same extent as 
 that of natural selection, against considerations of necessity. 
 Thus Mr. Spencer, in discussing an hypothetical enlarge- 
 ment of the horns of the Irish elk, enumerates some of the 
 chief changes which such a variation implies. "That the 
 horns may become better weapons, the whole apparatus 
 which moves them must be so strengthened as to impress 
 more force on them, and to bear the more violent reactions 
 of the blows given. The bones of the skull on which the 
 horns are seated must be thickened, otherwise they will 
 break. To render the thickening of these bones advantage- 
 ous, the vertebrae of the neck must be further developed ; 
 and without the ligaments that hold together these vertebrae, 
 and the muscles which move them, are also enlarged, 
 nothing will be gained. Such modifications of the neck 
 will be useless, or rather will be detrimental, if its fulcrum 
 be not made capable of resisting intenser strains; the upper 
 dorsal vertebrae and their spines must be strengthened, that 
 they may withstand the more violent contractions of the 
 neck muscles ; and like changes must be made on the 
 scapular arch. Still more must there be required a 
 simultaneous development of the bones "and muscles of the 
 fore-legs, since each of these extra growths in the horns, in 
 the skull, in the neck, in the shoulders, adds to the burden 
 which the fore-legs have to bear ; unless the deer with its 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 7! 
 
 heavier horns, head, neck, and shoulders, had stronger fore- 
 legs, it would not only suffer from loss of speed, but would 
 even fail in fight. Hence, to make larger horns of use, ad- 
 ditional sizes must be acquired by numerous bones, muscles, 
 and ligaments, as well as by the blood-vessels and nerves on 
 which their actions depend." ( " Principles of Biology," 
 vol. i., p. 452.) 
 
 Mr. Spencer gives only a rough indication of the neces- 
 sary coordinate changes, and no one could complete the 
 account ; but such an instance as the above is sufficient to 
 put the independence of variations wholly out of the ques- 
 tion. No one quality or change exists without those others, 
 inexhaustible in number and complexity, which are neces- 
 sary to it, and where a physiology is conceived as possib'e 
 at all, there are relations of necessity. But, inasmuch as the 
 theory of use inheritance also commonly conceives variation 
 of one quality as primarily independent, and as only later 
 and in the life of the individual working out its necessary 
 complements in the rest, in order that what were primarily 
 unrelated features of the organism may be handed on to the 
 next generation as still independent and yet as having an 
 external harmony, I cannot find that Mr. Spencer's favourite 
 "factor of organic evolution" avoids at all more success- 
 fully than does natural selection, the confusions which 
 inevitably await theory which moves by the disintegration of 
 the individual into self-sufficient and primarily unrelated 
 parts. In whatever way the theories of the third postulate 
 make use of the first postulate, they are unable to recon- 
 struct the unity of the organism. And we shall later find 
 that use inheritance is, in the end, as wholly founded on the 
 doctrine with which we have here to do as is natural 
 selection. 
 
 This first postulate is further shown in the ordinary bio- 
 logical treatment Q{ functionkss parts, which are supposed to 
 exist in their own right and in virtue of a separate inherit- 
 ance ; indeed, it underlies that whole doctrine which is the 
 
72 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 mere dogmatic assertion as of a fact, of the abstraction of 
 structure from function. Consider, for instance, a merely 
 vestigial and functionless element in the morphological plan 
 of an organism, such as is often given to us in the fibula or 
 in certain phalanges. It represents, let us say, a structure, 
 which, in other forms of a similar type, and certainly in the 
 ancestors of the form in question, is and was functional, but 
 which, modified as we see it, is useless. It persists, there- 
 fore, by the mere force of inheritance; it shows the particular 
 relationships of its descent, and its inheritance and long per- 
 sistence is independent of that of the functional parts. For 
 the bone is not necessary to the rest of the body, and it is in 
 no sense one with it. If it were thus necessary to, and one 
 with, the other parts, it would, although mediately, subserve 
 their functions. If it had arisen and if it were maintained 
 by any reciprocal reactions with them, and if it were therefore 
 due to anything else than an immediate action of a mysterious 
 process of inheritance, it would be at once the object and 
 the means of their functions, and thus it would not itself be 
 functionless. We might in this way start by saying that the 
 structure vs> functionless^ and pass on to regard it as useless, 
 and finally deny to it any relations of necessity with the 
 rest of the organism, implying that there may be in an 
 organism useless and, therefore, independent parts ; and 
 though we should be doing no more than simply to articu- 
 late a movement of thought which is everywhere present in 
 biological hypotheses, we should be utterly confounding two 
 distinct conceptions. A functionless part of an organism is 
 not useless, it is merely useless in a certain manner. It 
 subserves ends, but it does not subserve this or that end. 
 Nothing organic is functionless except for a special abstract 
 point of view. The phalanx which does not project from 
 the body, and the fibula which does not reach from end to 
 end of the leg, nor enters into functional articulation, 
 these are not functionless except under those names, and 
 except when each of them is considered as a thing by itself. 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 73 
 
 For abstract morphology they are functionless, vestigial, 
 what you will, but they are not functionless in the way in 
 which the doctrines of inheritance and of ontogeny take 
 them to be so. We are told that these parts, being unneces- 
 sary, having no other reason for them, and being therefore 
 such as cannot be maintained by the factors of organic evo- 
 lution, are mere rudiments representing formerly functional 
 and therefore formerly necessary parts; that they are there- 
 fore merely inherited ; and that, being merely inherited, they 
 persist in independence of the rest, and by no reason what- 
 ever. In such a view I can only find another example of 
 the bondage in which the biology of hypothesis stands to 
 abstract morphology, although it pretends, by inventing pro- 
 cesses of its own, to take account of the processes which are 
 known to physiology. For the parts in question are not 
 foreign bodies. They are rather, in the sense in which the 
 doctrines of inheritance and of the development of the 
 individual use the term, functional, although not as phalanx 
 and as fibula. They are built by armies of moving osteo- 
 blasts and by the transformation of cartilage, and they are 
 fashioned and maintained by cells which destroy and by 
 cells which deposit bone. Their membranes are supplied 
 with vessels and nerves. They take up space, they alter 
 blood, and they subserve feeling; they are not without their 
 origins and their results. There is adequate reason for them 
 in the rest of the body, otherwise they would be encap- 
 suled with fibres or eaten up by bone-eating cells. They 
 exist, and therefore they are necessary, and the body 
 recreates them every day. Yet we are told that they are 
 functionless. Yes, by analogy; but not as regards the 
 economies of this body of which they are parts. And what 
 has inheritance or the development of the individual to do 
 with that analogy? It is what is there and what occurs 
 that comes before us for explanation, and not, in the first 
 place, the homology of what is there and occurs with some- 
 thing which is not there and does not occur. Is this struc- 
 
74 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ture a modification, a vestige, a remnant of this or that in 
 another species ? Surely not, This, that I point out with 
 my finger, is itself, belonging to its own body, and having its 
 own relations with the rest ; and because of that belonging 
 and because of those relations it exists. My hand is my 
 own, it is no modification of yours. 
 
 When a part appears to be useless, it does so merely 
 because we are considering it as one separate whole thing. 
 Now, we only give it that unity (usually by analogy with a 
 homologous structure) in respect of a certain use which it, 
 as one whole thing, is supposed to represent. And when it 
 is found not to have that definite use, we say without 
 qualification that it has no use. Certainly it has no use, 
 but we have not to do with it, we have to do with a collec- 
 tion of things, with mere dust to be formed into unities of 
 function under another scheme than that which we have 
 unsuccessfully tried. The separate wholeness which we 
 attributed to it does not exist in nature, and we can hardly 
 be surprised if a part of the body, arbitrarily marked off from 
 the rest, does not appear to have any special reason for it 
 as a separate whole. That morphological elements should 
 be functionless is therefore not surprising, and is no ground 
 for any further inference than that the morphological 
 category is too abstract to serve as the sole category for 
 the enquiries of biology. Nothing in the body is one 
 structure except under an abstract scheme within which it 
 has a function, and one may sub-divide and cross-divide 
 the body into organs under very various schemes. There are, 
 for instance, the ordinary morphological scheme, the 
 histological, the cytological, and that of the germinal 
 layers. And what is functionless under one scheme is not 
 so under another. Certainly the vermiform appendix is 
 "vestigial," but you would not denyfunction to its peritoneum, 
 connective tissue and mucous membrane, nor again to the 
 nuclei and centrosomes of its cells, nor would you say, on 
 its account, that the hypoblast is partly functionless. 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 75 
 
 The conception of function is thus largely relative. It 
 rarely comes near to exhausting or even to formally allowing 
 for all the relations of a part, just because to regard the 
 latter as one part delimited from the rest is to delimit it in 
 respect of one function. Every organ, every part of the 
 body, every histological system, and every kind of cell, 
 must, to take the chief example, have its specific reaction 
 on the blood, and, very probably, its specific contribution to 
 the tone of feeling. The nervous system does not only 
 subserve sensory motor reactions and its directly trophic 
 influences, nor does muscle only subserve the relative move- 
 ments of parts, nor is bone necessary only because of its 
 firmness and resistance to stress. And the differentiation 
 of cells does not prevent them from fulfilling all the general 
 functions of cell life to a greater or lesser extent, except 
 perhaps conjugation ; at the least they all divide, grow, 
 assimilate, and excrete. Every part has weight and takes 
 up space. There is an infinity of relations ; and every one 
 of these, under some scheme, is a function, but is not 
 considered at all under other abstract points of view. And 
 some of these relations are disregarded, and others are 
 distributed under the sciences of special research, on 
 principles of convenience for hypothesis. It would merely 
 create confusion to no purpose if cytology were to take into 
 account morphological difference, or if morphology occupied 
 itself with histological functions. But when we come into 
 a sphere in which it is possible to predicate absolute useless- 
 ness of a part, and to go on to infer that it has no necessary 
 relations to other parts, and that it is therefore merely 
 inherited by itself because of a use which something like it 
 had very long ago, it becomes us to take into account the 
 manifoldness of relations. We must see whether there is 
 any concrete principle on which we may call any part one, 
 and, therefore, as absolutely one, functionless ; or whether, 
 in so doing, we are fallaciously making out of a judgment, 
 which may be quite true on its own abstract plane, the 
 
76 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ground for a general doctrine of the unrelatedness of parts. 
 And it seems to be evident that there is nothing in the 
 organism which is functionless or unrelated to the rest, 
 though there are features of it which are so functionless 
 and unrelated. I consider that biology, in treating of 
 functionless parts, has treated of them as absolutely 
 functionless, and that this is in contradiction with the 
 possibility of research into real process ; and the origin of 
 the whole matter seems to be that the distinctions of 
 abstract morphology are commonly held to answer to 
 divisions between parts of the real organism, and that these 
 parts are held to exist in their own right and independently 
 of one another, as regards inheritance, the development of 
 the individual, and the maintenance of the image. 
 
 Function is not a simple term. When it is used in 
 general biological theory it is supposed to mean all the 
 activities of a part, but in most cases it merely means that 
 activity in respect of which the part is called one thing, 
 and it is, in consequence, usually a purely morphological 
 conception. In the science of physiology it has sometimes 
 this meaning, and is at other times more concrete. From 
 this indefiniteness of meaning there arises a difficulty with 
 regard to the purposiveness of parts. For not all that pro- 
 ceeds from a part, but only one single external significance 
 is held to be its end and its significance to the individual. 
 That single and special function may be only exercised by 
 the part once in its history, or at rare intervals, or it may 
 even be a matter of chance whether it is ever exercised at 
 all. Horns may never be used in fight, and pollen may be 
 wasted on the wind. Such cases as these are only specially 
 remarkable ones, for in the case of every structure it is 
 fundamentally the same. And one is apt to assume hastily 
 that the significance of the part to the individual has nothing 
 to do with its rise and its maintenance in the individual, and 
 this assumption, when it is generalised, becomes the law 
 that structure preceeds function in the individual develop- 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 77 
 
 ment. That whole movement of thought is due to the 
 attribution of a merely abstract and external significance 
 to the part. This rare or chance function, when it is not 
 exercised, does not, for all the purposes of the study of 
 ontogeny, exist; and in such cases as I mentioned above, 
 even the fulfilment of the main function can have no reflex 
 effect on the part in question. The part is, however, 
 necessary to the body because of its inner functions; it 
 is developed and maintained by its physiological relations 
 with the rest. Just as a man is more than his external 
 professional significance under the abstract scheme of pro- 
 fessional life, and has wide relations with the rest of his 
 community otherwise than through his office, so does an 
 organic part arise from and subserve other and in this 
 respect more important functions than those by which it 
 is commonly named. And just as no one would think 
 so abstractly as to condemn a man as functionless, useless, 
 and without a raison d'etre, merely because he did not fit 
 into that professional scheme, so we shall err if we regard 
 anything which is in the body, and has therefore intimate 
 inner significances and relations, as functionless and as with- 
 out rationale^ merely because it does not effect a function 
 which we ascribe to it by analogy under an abstractly mor- 
 phological pattern. A vestigial structure is a conception 
 for morphology, but for the purposes of a concrete doctrine 
 of inheritance and ontogeny we have to rise above it, giving 
 it a place indeed, but not thinking of any part as really, or 
 as regards the individual, in any sense vestigial. 
 
 The postulate of the independence of parts is further to 
 be found in the biological treatment of latent and of alter- 
 native parts and qualities. For we have had occasion to 
 see that the latent quality has an important place in bio- 
 logical speculation ; and a great part of the theories exists 
 only in order to account for the supposed independent 
 existence of alternative and other latent qualities. Anlage 
 is a word which occurs on every page of the German authors, 
 
78 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 and it is to be remembered that the Anlage is not a thing 
 which has ever been seen, but is that hypothetical object 
 which represents the latent existence of one future particular. 
 It may not always work out its quality, and make it appear, 
 but so long as this or that feature of the organism is 
 possible, so long there is an Anlage for it in hiding in the 
 protoplasm; and such a foundation for a unit quality may 
 persist through many generations waiting its opportunity 
 for activity. The manifold features of the organism are 
 latent in the germ, and indeed often in the somatic cell ; 
 and the regeneration of lost parts is due to the existence 
 of the necessary parts and other differences in a latent 
 condition in the embryonic tissue of healing. All organic 
 differences are inherited in latency; out of latency they 
 come into the development of the individual ; they are 
 represented as varying when latent ; all the stages of onto- 
 geny which have passed are latent in the adult ; and each 
 individual in an alternation of generations has the other 
 forms of the cycle in a latent condition (Anlagezustand} 
 within it. Each sex holds, as latent, the alternative char- 
 acters to its own, and in more complex polymorphisms 
 there is manifested in the individual but one set out of 
 several sets of latent qualities. Every change which the 
 species undergoes in new conditions was latent in it before. 
 Certainly this matter of latency is the chief category of 
 biology. It simply answers to all other differences of the 
 individual or species than those which are apparent in the 
 part or the stage or the individual in question. 
 
 Now, whatever is latent is simply not there, it has no 
 existence. This plant will have flowers some day, or it will 
 not at any rate it may have them ; but at present it is 
 without them, and its flowers do not exist. But they are 
 its flowers, they belong to its scheme ; in a word, they are 
 possible. Latency is possibility, and a thing is possible 
 because of something else. And the problem for biology is 
 to find a form for that something else. All the theories 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 79 
 
 which postulate " vehicles of qualities" exist for no other 
 purpose than to find the ground of the possibility of latent 
 qualities. Now, the latent is either possible because of the 
 whole of the organism of present appearance, that is, it is 
 implied in the differences which at present exist ; or it is 
 possible by itself and independently of the other differences 
 because of something which exists continuously in order to 
 make it possible, that is, it is implied in its hypothetical 
 agent. We do not need both of these forms for that in 
 virtue of which a feature of the organism is possible, and 
 they are in contradiction with one another. And our choice 
 between them depends entirely on whether we think that a 
 latent quality is entirely independent of all other differences, 
 and is a thing absolutely for itself, or whether we regard it as 
 being conditioned by the other differences within the unity 
 of the organism. And the biological treatment of latent 
 qualities shows that, even in latency, the differences of the 
 organism are looked on as mere differences, each of which is 
 independent of the rest. Each belongs to its " vehicle," and 
 is possible because of it. But it must be remembered that 
 this solution of the matter is not so perfectly straightforward 
 as it seems, for behind it there lies the question as to what 
 are the grounds for the possibility of each " vehicle." This 
 question is never answered, because the " vehicle," being 
 unrelated, does not aspire to possibility ; it is satisfied with 
 abstract existence. 
 
 Now, this independent existence of latent differences 
 meets with some difficulties. For there are very many of 
 them. Transplant this primrose to Brazil, and it will pro- 
 bably change considerably; but it is difficult to think of 
 those new qualities as existing independently in a latent 
 condition in my garden. Am I covered with latent bruises 
 because if you strike me I turn blue ? If death, as they 
 tell us, is a feature of organisms acquired by natural selec- 
 tion, then we may surely regard it as a latent feature 
 existing in the individual independently of the rest by 
 
80 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 virtue of a special " vehicle " in the nucleus. How many 
 latent tails has a lizard, and how many are my latent finger 
 nails? For number plainly comes in when the possible 
 objects are separate from one another. If a bone is broken 
 and frequently disturbed, it will form a false joint at the 
 breach, articular cartilage, synovial membrane and all ; but 
 we can hardly think of such a latent joint existing in a 
 special vehicle at every part of a bone. And all the 
 qualities of the whole organism are latent in a somatic cell 
 which is capable of reproducing the whole. In fact there 
 is much more latent in an organism than is ever actual at 
 any one time, and if all these possibilities are separate 
 things, we must invent a form for them in which they can 
 be present in infinite numbers within a microscopic cell. 
 
 Again, certain latent differences do in fact accompany 
 one another into existence. The manifold characteristics 
 of an alternative form do not appear in independence of 
 one another but together. There is every appearance of 
 intimate relations between the various qualities of a sex ; 
 and if one of them exists the others also exist. In such a 
 set of qualities, which may be proved by experiment to be 
 one with one another, each one appears to imply all the 
 others. And in not a few cases the nature of the nexus 
 between them, that which is the identity for the whole set, 
 may be more or less clearly defined. The " Evolution of 
 Sex " I has nothing at all to do with evolution ; it is a very 
 brilliant essay on the physiological relatedness of morpho- 
 logical and other characteristics in the matter of sex. 
 Latent differences again can hardly seem to be independent 
 things, when one considers that the various parts in the 
 successive stages of ontogeny are developed in intelligible 
 and purposeful relations and in an intelligible order. In a 
 word, the existence of latent qualities as abstract separate 
 things in the form of vehicles of qualities is contrary both 
 to probability and to experience. And it is worthy of re- 
 
 1 Geddes and Thompson, Contemporary Science Series. 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 8 1 
 
 mark that if they have existence as Anlagen at all, it must 
 be as separate and discrete Anlagen. For if the differences 
 have an immediate existence underived from the existence 
 of one another but only derived from that of their respective 
 anthropomorphic agents, there must be a vehicle for every 
 difference j otherwise there would be latent qualities which 
 existed only in possibility, because of one another, and not 
 in abstract actuality in the vehicle ; and if you deny self- 
 sufficient existence to some differences, then why not regard 
 them all as derivative and having their ground in the others ? 
 Seeing, then, that the theory gives us a form for the organ- 
 ism which is at once improbable and contrary to observa- 
 tion, what shall we regard as the impulse for this postulate 
 in the matter of latent differences ? Two points may be 
 given in explanation of it the definiteness of latent qualities 
 on the one hand, and on the other that purely morphological 
 consideration of them which we have already observed. 
 
 An individual becomes, let us say, male or female, or a 
 shoot becomes a collection of green leaves or a flower, or a 
 single element in the flower becomes a pistil or a petal, 
 according to its nutritive conditions. Now, these were 
 alternative latent characters in the various parts in question. 
 And in such cases as these, if we were to substitute the 
 definite conception of possibility for the indefinite concep- 
 tion of latency, we should immediately feel that the former 
 was in some way inadequate to the case, and that it lacked 
 something of the meaning of the latter. While admitting 
 that the resulting image is in fact either male or female, 
 either foliage leaves or flower, or either pistil or petal in 
 every case, we should think that these alternatives can 
 hardly exhaust what is possible to the stages before the 
 various differentiations. Between these two alternatives 
 how many forms might be intercalated, each of which is 
 surely possible ! How possible for the organism, if left to 
 itself, and having within it no definite and separate repre- 
 sentative for each quality that is to come, to err in almost 
 
 F 
 
82 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 any direction ! We do not talk of latent bruises, or of 
 latent false joints, because these are not normal, and may 
 occur anywhere ; they, indeed, are possible and no more. 
 But these definite purposive characters, which must be ex- 
 actly so-and-so or be useless, are surely predetermined in 
 some other and more distinct way than as the mere results 
 of what we have given to us in the undifferentiated stage. 
 Shall a difference in conditions which is simply quantitative, 
 or at most, chemical, acting on an embryo which has not the 
 two alternatives as two separate things now already within 
 it, determine the creature to one of these two definite, 
 complexly differing, yet perfect images? If the qualities 
 are possible, they can only be so because the discrete 
 exactness of each is laid down in discrete and special 
 mechanisms. Otherwise the most various differences in 
 conditions would have the most various effects on the 
 image, and their results would not be restricted to the 
 making of just this one or just that other of two, and no 
 more than two, perfect forms. We have surely to do with a 
 mechanism of such a kind that it transforms all effects com- 
 ing upon it into the bare, punctual, momentary decision as 
 to whether this pattern or that one shall be followed. The 
 conception of possibility cannot be adequate to the expression 
 of latency. This is, I suppose, the sort of movement which 
 leads to the doctrine of the independence of latent qualities 
 as separate things. And it is not easy to answer it. 
 
 This difficulty with regard to alternative qualities is little 
 more than a special case of that problem of ontogeny which 
 has usually been solved by the help of the same postulate. 
 For the theories, the successive stages of the rise of the in- 
 dividual are separate things, which may or may not condi- 
 tion one another. They are usually unrelated, and if they 
 are related then it is a " mystery." How, we are asked, 
 shall this huge final definite system come out of that minute 
 and comparatively homogeneous germ? The mass is vastly 
 multiplied, and the process is not carried on under the ab- 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 83 
 
 solute constancy of experimental conditions ; it may even 
 suffer considerable disturbances, yet the result is the de- 
 finite adult. The germs of a thousand species are not dis- 
 tinguishable from one another ; their conditions of nutrition 
 and growth are so nearly the same that there is not room in 
 these minute objects for much difference in chemical or 
 structural respects, yet each one brings forth its kind. And 
 this difficulty which we have in regard to the germ exists 
 also, and in the same way, in regard to any succeeding stage. 
 It amounts to this, that we cannot conceive of any kind of 
 nature for the germ, or other stage, which should be such 
 as to admit, with great exactitude, of the possibility of only 
 one future definite image. We cannot conceive the germ 
 as being thus the possibility of the image in virtue of those 
 qualities in it which are known, or are such as might be 
 known to cytological anatomy or physiology. To explain 
 the future differences we assert, therefore, that they must be 
 there already, in actuality, in the germ, each of them in 
 virtue of its separate agent. I admit the difficulty, but deny 
 the adequacy of the ordinary hypothetical solution of it. 
 It does not seem possible that cytology should ever give us 
 that difference between germs which corresponds to the 
 difference between images ; in other words, it does not seem 
 possible that there should be an expression for the character 
 of the whole in terms of an abstract qualitative, or quantita- 
 tive, or morphological character of the germ. A mathe- 
 matical, or chemical, or physiological formula for the 
 character of a species is an attractive, but a vain dream. 
 The one serious attempt that has been made to reduce the 
 differences which exist primarily between sexes, and then 
 between species, to terms of physiological tendencies I 
 mean that of Rolph, and later of Geddes and Thomson- 
 was possible only because its main distinction was simple 
 and unique. And a single distinction of anabolism and 
 katabolism may give an idea of the whole difference of a 
 gregarine from a flagellate, but it will not serve for the com- 
 
84 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 parison of classes which are on different grades of organisa- 
 tion. Still less is it possible, as we shall see in the next 
 chapter, to surmount the difficulty with the help of the 
 anthropomorphic agent. 
 
 But if it is hard to believe that there is, in the mere 
 natural qualities of the germ or of the later stage, and apart 
 from the intervention of one-sided activity, the full deter- 
 mination of the possibility of development, the matter grows 
 even more complex when it appears that the germ has 
 alternative destinies, and that there are two possibilities. 
 For these two, in the case of sex, seem to be without an 
 inner relation to one another, just because they are 
 externally so perfectly adapted. In proportion as we gain 
 knowledge of the complex preparations of structure and 
 function and feeling which are made in each for the other, 
 so do these adaptations seem more intelligible as for one 
 another within the species, and less intelligible and more 
 arbitrary as from one another within the rise of the 
 individual. Indeed, I hardly wonder that the latter aspect, 
 as ex hypothesi arbitrary and unintelligible, has been given 
 up to the "vehicle." For we appear to have two patterns 
 which will not fit one another; and in such cases the 
 tendency of men is to deny that one of them is an 
 intelligible pattern, and to make it into miracle. In this 
 case of alternative qualities the two patterns are, the 
 alternative forms as purposefully complementary to one 
 another on the one hand, and on the other the same forms 
 as the two possibilities of development from an undifferen- 
 tiated beginning. Now, if the germ, or the stage immediately 
 antecedent to the critical differentiation stands (in its whole 
 nature as for research and without agents) as the possibility 
 of the one side, then the possibility of the other side must 
 be wholly conditioned by that first possibility, and the two 
 sides have an inner identity of origin, and are ontogeneti- 
 cally intelligible in relation to one another. But in that 
 case the odds seem to be infinite that the outer identity of 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 85 
 
 reciprocal adaptation would not be present in its large 
 complexity and critical definiteness, and that the two sides 
 would not be phylogenetically (as under the theories of 
 organic evolution) intelligible in relation to one another. 
 In a word, if you grant that the image arises by intelligible 
 processes, and that it is not manufactured by the occasional 
 intervention of the agent, it is difficult to find how the two 
 sides should be for one another. If you grant that each 
 sex cannot become so-and-so arbitrarily and without effect 
 on the other in its rise, and that each stage of ontogeny 
 cannot be so-and-so arbitrarily and apart from the rest, then 
 possibility is your conception for the determination of the 
 form of the individual, and the various differences of the 
 organism are not without intelligible relation to one another. 
 If, however, each alternative quality and each successive 
 period of the organism exists in its own right, as a latent 
 thing, then it is certainly easier to derive the form of the 
 individual, under any formula of external usefulness which 
 you may be in the habit of using, from the compounding 
 together of such contrivances and parts and qualities as 
 will make up a really good, working organism, adapted to 
 its mate by special improvements, and fitted out with 
 arrangements for almost all the circumstances of its life. It 
 is the definiteness, complexity, and most of all the purpose- 
 fulness of "latent" qualities, with the apparently inevitable 
 consequent necessity of treating them as arbitrary with 
 regard to their inner relations, which impel our theorists to 
 bring them also under the first postulate of the hypothetical 
 biology. 
 
 This postulate also rules the doctrines of organic evolu- 
 tion, in their one-sided method of finding the sole reason 
 for every point of the organism in an often merely 
 conjectural external use for it. It is easy to imagine the 
 putting together of this and that adaptation in the course of 
 a supposed phylogeny, because, in fancy, we may add any- 
 thing to anything. Since each part exists in its own right, 
 
86 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 there is here no hindrance by considerations of possibility, 
 
 and organic qualities which have admittedly no inner 
 
 relations to one another may be combined or permuted, 
 
 always in fancy, in almost any way you please. I say 
 
 " almost," because it may be said that we have always this 
 
 one guarantee of possibility, that the theories of organic 
 
 evolution exclude forms which are unsuitably put together, 
 
 with an external unsuitableness. We have, for instance, no 
 
 animal with a skin notably too small for his body. And 
 
 the conjecture as to why the parts harmonise externally is 
 
 easily made. For the animal with a somewhat tight skin 
 
 cannot, in times of plenty, eat so much as others do, or his 
 
 peculiarity will repel rather than attract his possible mates, 
 
 so that the ill-adapted form will not be multiplied. Or, by 
 
 the continual pressure on his skin he will somewhat enlarge 
 
 it, and the acquired quality of having a comfortable skin 
 
 will be transmitted to his descendants ; indeed, all three 
 
 factors may cooperate. But such conjectures that organic 
 
 parts will become, by imperceptible gradations, shifted, 
 
 altered, eliminated and preserved by reason of their 
 
 independent adaptation to one another, are very different 
 
 from the knowledge that the possibility of the parts is in 
 
 their inner identity alone. For the former restriction to 
 
 theory merely demands, and not always successfully, that 
 
 your suppositions should not be grotesque ; but the latter 
 
 demands that their form should not be such as to violate 
 
 the possibility of morphology and of physiology. And the 
 
 form of the doctrines of organic evolution implies that 
 
 almost anything can exist with almost anything else in the 
 
 organism. For it is not only based on the conception of 
 
 independent and uncorrelated variation, but it works with 
 
 the supposition that innumerable other forms, besides those 
 
 of which we know, have existed and are possible. There 
 
 would be little profit in debating that question, for it would 
 
 all be conjecture from beginning to end ; but I think that it 
 
 might be possible to bring certain strong conjectures against 
 
THE FIRST POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 87 
 
 the probability that many of the intermediate forms which 
 our science postulates would be capable of life. In any case, 
 however, this matter of unlimited conjecture from morpho- 
 logical homologies is unattractive, for who shall substantiate 
 a word of it ? And it is, more gravely, utterly untroubled 
 by considerations of the rise and maintenance of the 
 relations in the individual, looking on inheritance as the 
 immediate reproduction of unrelated particulars. 
 
 Such, then, are the chief examples of the working of this 
 first postulate, and it is hardly necessary further to point out 
 its falsity. Organic differences of every kind are not separ- 
 ate elements, they are not numerable units, and the organism 
 is not a mere sum of such units. To find that this is the 
 case one has only to attempt to find one " character " in an 
 organism which is not at once a part of a larger whole and 
 itself capable of analysis into a hundred subordinate rela- 
 tions ; one has only to consider that all differences of the 
 organism arise together with one another in the development 
 of the individual, and that the elements of morphology are 
 proportions and that those of physiology are functions for the 
 whole. The activity of every cell is not from itself alone, 
 nor is the harmonious cooperation of all the cells an acci- 
 dental or miraculous agreement in action on the part of 
 discrete units. However much we may appear to gain for 
 biology by separating the organism into things which play 
 on one another externally, and whose particular activities 
 can therefore not be intelligibly derived, we do no more, in 
 reality, than to do away with the individuality of a natural 
 system in order to invest its parts with the more unique 
 character of moral agents. And the theory cannot even be 
 called a working hypothesis, because it is impossible to 
 define the limits of each unit, and because no one knows 
 what is the nature of their agreement with one another. 
 The manifoldness and intimacy of its relations with the en- 
 vironment and with other species and other individuals 
 would make it impossible, except for purely formal 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 hypotheses, to regard the organism as a total of elementary 
 parts. For the relations of a living creature are infinite in 
 extent ; they go out into all the world. Yet there is no 
 principle, under our postulate, by which we might deny to 
 any part of this infinity the dignity of a separate adaptation 
 separately represented in the germ. For everything that 
 you can say about the body distinguishes one of its particu- 
 lars, and it does not matter whether it is a distinction which is 
 commonly made and considered characteristic or no. For if 
 there are no inner relations for the particulars which are com- 
 monly noticed, it must also be allowed that the most search- 
 ing or the most whimsical analysis can still find nothing but 
 mere difference. In a word, the whole point of view is not one 
 with which serious science can work at all. For science is just 
 the continuous reduction of particulars, which at first appear 
 unrelated and associated only by an invariable habit of 
 occurrence, to terms of their inner identity ; and if we are 
 content to remain at the observation of invariable habits 
 of concurrence, it is not easy to see how the mere recog- 
 nition of the external usefulness of these invariable 
 concomitances and sequences can carry our knowledge 
 either far or surely. What we want is the middle term, as 
 Dr. Stirling has it, which mediates between the extremes. 
 For by it the special sciences of organisms do their work, 
 and we may surely hope that it is not impossible that biology 
 should recognise the rights of their method. This is to ask 
 no more than that relations of reciprocity should be formally 
 allowed for in our theories of the nature of the parts of 
 organisms, and that we should not, in our science, utterly 
 disregard that principle which rules in every other. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 THE second postulate of biology is, that all the qualities of 
 the organism and all its stages are the manifestation of, and 
 are related to one another only through an agent or 
 system of agents within the known body. The agent is 
 purely self-determining, and is in a relation of pure activity 
 to the body, which, in consequence, is in a relation of pure 
 passivity to the agent. The latter may or may not be 
 associated with particular microscopic appearances in the 
 body, or with particular states of its feeling, but in all cases 
 it is formally supposed to have such a phenomenal existence. 
 It carries the qualities when they are latent, and therefore 
 carries alternative qualities ; and it manifests these when 
 and where they ought to be manifested. If the agent is a 
 " material vehicle of hereditary qualities " there is a distinct 
 agent to each difference in the organism, but a system may 
 be given to such agents by the hypothesis of a material 
 " architecture" from which they are unfolded. If the agent 
 is a quasi-psychical principle, there is only one, and its system 
 is a system of ideas dimly apprehended. 
 
 The fallacy of the second postulate is, that the agent is 
 merely the abstract principle of identity, to which a particular 
 place has been given as one of and as among the differences 
 for which it is identity ; that as the product of a logical 
 distinction hypostasized into a phenomenal difference, it is 
 in contradiction with the possibility of research ; and that 
 it is essentially unknowable. It is found not to answer the 
 problem, but to assume into its self-contradiction the 
 distinction of categories which gives rise to the problem of 
 
9O PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 the development of the individual. It is finally referable to 
 the doctrine of abstract substance or of the thing in itself, 
 and is found, like the first postulate, to be the mere applica- 
 tion of the logic of abstract identity to the organism, in 
 defiance of the methods of the observational sciences ; so 
 that we are again justified in regarding the systematic 
 biology as an aberrant form of metaphysic. 
 
 The second postulate, or doctrine of agents, is the 
 necessary consequence of the first postulate, or doctrine of 
 the independence of qualities. For if any one quality has 
 not a necessary and a possible origin in the others, and if 
 the whole organism, as it may be known, is not the ground 
 of explanation for each and all of its parts, there must 
 plainly be a something of which all the appearances are the 
 mere results. On this something they can have no effect 
 in return, because to do so would be to have effects, though 
 mediately, on one another. If one stage of development in 
 the individual cannot find its explanation in what comes 
 before and after it, but is cut off from the rest, as it were, with 
 a knife, then it must plainly be the manifestation of some- 
 thing which, though it is not the organism, is yet in some 
 way the unity of the organism. For there is in a living 
 creature an overwhelming evidence of system ; and as soon 
 as we deny that the system is in the parts as well as made 
 out of them, and make the system, so far as the parts are 
 concerned, a mere external show, we must evidently bring 
 forward some agent which itself shall carry the system in 
 some other form within it, and reveal it in the otherwise 
 unrelated parts. Borrowing a diagram which has been used 
 for a different though a fundamentally identical argument, 1 
 we may illustrate the method as follows. 
 
 If A B C D are successive stages of ontogeny, or 
 contemporary qualities of the individual it does not matter 
 which we may represent the ordinary method of research 
 by the form 
 
 1 Appearance and Reality. 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 9! 
 A B C D 
 
 where the reason for each difference is found in all the 
 others. In the various forms through which we have already 
 traced it, the first postulate does away with this relation of 
 inter-dependence, and finds that each stage or part has a 
 separate, and so far absolute, existence. But the form 
 
 A B C D 
 
 cannot be regarded as anything but mere nonsense, though 
 it has had its representatives. Our systems of biology 
 therefore proceed to 
 
 a b c d 
 
 \ \ I I 
 A B C D 
 
 where abed are the parts of a sytem of agents, and where 
 A B C D are merely derivative effects of these, as the one- 
 sided direction of the arrows represents. For to give A any 
 effect whatever on a, or to allow it in any way to condition 
 the operations of a or b is manifestly to give up the whole 
 point of view. For 
 
 a b c d 
 
 I I I I 
 A B C D 
 
 is manifestly no better than 
 
 aA bB cC dD 
 
 which is our first form over again, making the agents quite 
 superfluous and meaningless. And to invent, as some 
 ingenious theorists of ontogeny do, the form 
 
92 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ab c d 
 
 \/\'\'\ 
 A B C D 
 
 is to have recourse to the very simple expedient of ante- 
 dating one portion of any moment of the development, and 
 of calling it the agent a little juggle which I mention for 
 the sake of completeness, but which need not detain us. 
 Given this one-sided relation of the agent to the state or 
 quality, which is determined by it, but which does not in 
 turn condition it, I need hardly point out that a and b are 
 unknowable. For if they could be known, they would be 
 part of A and B. One could not describe 's action with- 
 out implying in the same breath A's reaction, and so making 
 a an element in A, which, for the purposes of the argument, 
 it would be frivolous to distinguish from A. And further, 
 if a and b are qualities or sets of qualities that is, if they 
 can be known they are forever discrete and separate from 
 one another, by the very argument which gave rise to them. 
 Therefore any discovery about a and b would put them into 
 the same category as A and B, and you would need to 
 invent new determinant agents, and, for the purposes of the 
 theory to point out that these your new ones were as yet 
 beyond the power of the highest objectives. But I have 
 said enough to show that the doctrine of agents, is, first, made 
 possible only by the doctrine of the independence of parts, 
 stages, qualities in a word, of differences ; and again, that 
 the determinant agent is absolutely demanded by the inde- 
 pendence and irrationality of the discrete particulars. 
 
 There are now, and always have been, two theories of 
 the development of the individual. The first holds that 
 for every difference in the adult image, there is a special 
 difference in the germ, though the germ-difference need 
 not be in the same kind as the image-difference to which 
 it "corresponds." There have been two forms to this 
 theory, one of them regarding the differences in the germ 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 93 
 
 as exactly the same as the later manifested differences, so 
 that the germ would contain the image in little ; and the 
 other regarding the germ-foundations or Anlagen for the 
 qualities of the adult as differing in kind from the latter. 
 Observation of the germ excluded the former alternative, 
 but the latter is of such a kind that observation cannot 
 touch it. For the Anlagen or germ-differences, each of 
 which answers to a quality or part of the explicit organism, 
 may be associated with any microscopical appearance you 
 please, as a list of the theories would show. And as there 
 is no reason for supposing that this granule corresponds 
 with that quality, so there is no reason for supposing that 
 this particular structure in the germ has not to do with that 
 explicit particular of the organism, if you grant the method 
 of the hypothesis to be valid. Further, since almost every 
 organism may be determined by circumstances into one 
 or two or more reciprocally exclusive and perhaps widely 
 differing but perfectly definite images, as, to give the most 
 general instance, in the case of sex, the germ-differences 
 must be more numerous than the adult-differences, because 
 the alternative qualities must exist in the germ together, as 
 their corresponding germ-differences. And the number of 
 these " vehicles of qualities " must be still more numerous 
 than would yet appear. For we must remember that there 
 are time-differences, successive stages, each with its host of 
 qualities ; and, indeed, whoever cares to go into the matter 
 will find that if we give a " material vehicle " in the germ 
 for every quality of the organism, the germ must be very 
 large. But the differences in the germ need not be material 
 particles, they might be the differences of an ideal system, 
 quasi-psychically present to the germ ; and the latter would 
 determine the succeeding stage in conformity with ideas of 
 the necessity of parts, and so on from stage to stage. These 
 are the theories of the first kind, implying the existence in 
 the germ of something which is not the qualities of the 
 germ, but which corresponds^ difference for difference, to 
 
94 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 the qualities of the germ and of every succeeding 
 stage. 
 
 The second view is the " epigenetic " theory of the 
 development of the individual. It is best denned nega- 
 tively, with regard to the features of the first theory. It 
 has no " vehicle of qualities " and knows nothing of a 
 quasi-psychical principle. In a word, it is the critical point 
 of view, and has no hypothesis. It may perhaps be dis- 
 tinguished from the other as the evolutionary theory, in so 
 far as " evolution " implies the rise of what is complex and 
 heterogeneous from what is comparatively homogeneous 
 and simple, rather than the rise of a less complex system 
 of differences from a more complex system of determinant 
 " vehicles." By possibility the epigenetic theory does not 
 signify, as the other does, abstract actuality in another form. 
 The adult qualities are in the germ in possibility but not 
 " in material representatives " or in a quasi-psychical know- 
 ledge, for everything that is in the germ is a quality of the 
 germ itself. The epigenetic theory is thus the denial of the 
 second postulate of the systematic biology. 
 
 Now, the biologists of hypothesis, as they subscribe to the 
 first postulate, also with one accord subscribe, in one form 
 or another, to the second. And some of them say, as they 
 all imply, that the non-epigenetic view of the development 
 of the individual is necessary to the doctrine of adaptation 
 by the transformation of species. In this we shall find 
 that they are right. The three postulates are closely inter- 
 dependent. And because an hypothesis as to the nature of 
 the determination of the form of the individual accompanies, 
 as its complement, every hypothesis as to the manner of 
 the transformation of species, it is necessary to pay that 
 attention to these hypotheses of the germ-representation of 
 qualities, which their frequency, elaboration and confessed 
 importance demand. 
 
 Now, we have theories in this kind from many authors, 
 but especially from Darwin and de Vries, Spencer, Haeckel 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 95 
 
 and Wiesner, and from Naegeli and Weismann among the 
 hypotheses of material vehicles ; and from Stahl, Jaeger, and 
 others among the hypotheses of quasi-psychical principles. 
 The first class falls into three groups. The first of these 
 consists of theories which give no hint as to how the 
 " vehicles " come to do the right thing in the right time and 
 place, and they differ further in including other qualities in 
 the hypotheses than merely primarily morphological qualities. 
 According to the third group, the " vehicle " is for a part 
 of the organism, and carries all the qualities for that part ; 
 and its systems, especially those of Naegeli and Weisrnann, 
 are very highly elaborated. Spencer and his legitimate 
 followers find the secret of individuality in the external 
 identity of minute constituent elements throughout the body, 
 so that each of their units carries all the qualities of the 
 body ; but these theories, in their working out, forsake this 
 form in all but appearance, and the unit becomes a deter- 
 minant as contrasted with material which, to it, is purely 
 passive. I shall shortly refer to five of these hypotheses, 
 namely, those of de Vries, Spencer, Weismann, Naegeli, and 
 Brooks, before proceeding to the general criticism. 
 
 DE VRIES' THEORY OF PANGENESIS. 
 
 This theory may be sufficiently indicated in the words of 
 its author : 
 
 11 The hypothesis is one of intracellular pangenesis, and I 
 shall give to the minute bodies, each of which represents 
 one hereditary quality, a new name, and shall call them 
 Pangenes. 
 
 " I consider the thesis, that all the hereditary foundations 
 (Anlagcn) of the organism must be represented in the cell 
 nucleus, as the most important result of the last decade's 
 research into the cell. I shall try to show that this thesis 
 leads us to assume a transport of material particles which 
 
96 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 are the vehicles of the individual hereditary qualities. But 
 this transport is not through the entire organism, nor even 
 from one cell to another, but takes place within the limits 
 of individual cells. The material vehicles of hereditary 
 qualities are carried out of the nucleus to the organs 
 of the cell. In the nucleus they are for the most 
 part inactive, but in the rest of the organs of the cell they 
 can become active. All the qualities are represented in the 
 nucleus, but in the protoplasm of every cell only a limited 
 number are represented " (P. 5.) And in another place : 
 "This hypothesis leads to the following consequences. 
 With the exception of those sorts of pangenes which are 
 already active in the nuclei, as, for instance, those which 
 rule nuclear division, all kinds must pass out from the 
 nucleus, that they may become active. But most of the 
 pangenes of every kind remain in the nuclei, where they 
 multiply themselves, partly for the purpose of nuclear 
 division, and partly for the sake of their distribution into 
 the protoplasm. That distribution concerns in every case 
 only those kinds of pangenes which must enter into function. 
 In order to do so they can be transported by the currents 
 of the protoplasm, and be carried into the proper organs of 
 the cell. Here they unite with the pangenes which are 
 already present, and multiply, and take on their activity. 
 The whole protoplasm consists of such pangenes, which 
 have at diverse times been emitted from the nucleus, and of 
 their descendants. There is no other living foundation in 
 the protoplasm." (P. 211.) And again, " The hereditary 
 qualities must be grounded in living substance; every 
 vegetative germ cell, and every fertilised ovum must con- 
 tain in potential form within it all the factors which make 
 up the character of the species in question. The visible 
 phenomena of heredity are the manifestations of the qualities 
 of very minute and invisible particles which are hidden in 
 every living substance. And, indeed, one must assume one 
 special particle for each hereditary quality in order to be able 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 97 
 
 to give account of all the phenomena. I call these unities 
 pangenes. Invisibly small, but still of quite another order 
 than chemical molecules, each of them being made up of 
 innumerable molecules, these pangenes must grow and 
 multiply and distribute themselves in cell division into all, or 
 at least nearly all, the cells of the organism. They are either 
 inactive and latent, or active; but they can multiply when 
 in either condition. They are specially inactive in the cells 
 of the germ tracks, and they commonly reach their highest 
 activity in the somatic cells. In the higher organisms it is 
 probable that never all the pangenes in the same cell arrive 
 at activity, but that in each cell one or a few groups of 
 pangenes arrive at the mastery, and stamp their character 
 upon the cell." (P. 188.) 
 
 I do not think it is necessary to quote any more of this 
 theory of the qualities of the individual, or to describe its 
 more highly developed parts, in order to make evident in it 
 all the characteristics which I have enumerated as belonging 
 to the systems of the biology of hypothesis. However full 
 the theory may be of references to the facts of the organic 
 world, it is yet not in the least supported by the latter, be- 
 cause the matter under discussion, the relation of qualities 
 to individuality, involves only a feature of organisms which 
 is universal and in respect of which organisms do not differ. 
 It seems fairly evident that we have to do with a meta- 
 physical question alone, in all these quotations, just the 
 question of identity in difference, of substance and quality. 
 The pangenes or anthropomorphic agents, each one of 
 which is a material vehicle of a special quality, are unknow- 
 able, because if we knew them and found them in the body 
 we should find the processes of each one affecting the qual- 
 ities in charge of other pangenes just as much as its own 
 quality, and we could hardly describe any one of these agents 
 as anything but a set of qualities itself. They are anthropo- 
 morphic because they are purely self-determining and not 
 passive, and because they know the right and do it. They 
 
98 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 become functional when it is time for them to do so, they 
 slip out of the nucleus when they are needed outside, they go 
 through the cytoplasm to the part of the cell which requires 
 their " quality." Their arrangements among themselves as 
 to when each is to be active or latent, are carried on by con- 
 ceptions of a normal order; for if it were only a blind 
 struggle of each to express itself, carried on against the 
 others and against the rest of the cell, then each would be 
 conditioned by the others and by that which it is supposed 
 to condition, and would simply be a part of the organism 
 among other parts. And if that were the case it seems 
 possible that even the quality which it carries would not be 
 wholly t independent of the other qualities. 
 
 MR. SPENCER'S THEORY OF PHYSIOLOGICAL UNITS. 
 
 This theory is in two respects the most serious and 
 credible of all. The agents are at times represented by Mr. 
 Spencer as being similar to one another throughout the 
 individual ; and as constitutive rather than directing, that is, 
 as making up the bulk of the organism. I emphasise these 
 points for obvious reasons. The first, if it were consistently 
 held to, would secure a certain kind of identity present in 
 and throughout all the bodily parts an identity of material 
 in that a similar structure would be repeated in all the 
 units ; and the second point, if consistently held to, would 
 do away with the uninspired remnant which is determined 
 by the self-determining units, so that the whole body would 
 be self-determined, and so that we should not be forced to 
 look upon that impossible relation of the purely active to 
 the purely passive of which I have spoken. The apparent 
 value of the theory depends upon its apparent consistency 
 on these two points. But each of them is not only vague, 
 but is positively ambiguous for theoretic purposes. The 
 agents are now similar to one another, and again dissimilar ; 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 99 
 
 they are now merely constitutive, and again directing. The 
 significance of this contradiction is plain. The question 
 here, as in all such theories, is as to the relation of the 
 universal and the particular within individuality, and Mr. 
 Spencer's method is to make hypothetical units which are 
 either identical with one another, thus supporting the uni- 
 versal, or different, thus answering to the particulars. Be- 
 tween two aspects of the individual he inserts his agents, 
 which answer now to one and again to the other, but can- 
 not answer to both ; and the problem of individuality is 
 answered by the self-contradiction of the agents. I quote 
 some paragraphs which exhibit the strength and the fallacy 
 of the theory. 
 
 "The tendency displayed by an animal organism as well 
 as by each of its organs, to return to a state of integrity by 
 the assimilation of new matter, when it has undergone the 
 waste consequent on activity, is a tendency which is not 
 manifestly deducible from first principles, though it appears 
 to be in harmony with them. If in the blood there existed 
 ready formed units exactly like in kind to those of which 
 each organ consists, the sorting of these units, ending in 
 the union of each kind with already existing groups of the 
 same kind, would be merely a good example of Differentia- 
 tion and Integration. It would be analogous to the process 
 by which, from a mixed solution of salts, there are deposited 
 segregated masses of these salts, in the shape of different 
 crystals." 
 
 We have here a distinct statement of the difference of the 
 units. They can be " sorted " and united with groups of 
 the same kind. 
 
 " But as already said, though the selective assimilation 
 by which the repair of organs is effected no doubt results 
 in part from an action of this kind, which is consequent on 
 the persistence of force, the facts cannot be thus wholly 
 accounted for, since organs are in part made up of units 
 that do not exist as such in the circulating fluids. The 
 
ICO PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 process becomes comprehensible, however, if it be shown 
 that, as suggested in 54, groups of compound units have 
 a certain power of moulding adjacent fit materials into units 
 of their own form." 
 
 Here we find that the agents are not merely constitutive, 
 they are self-determining and other-determining; there is 
 the agent and the material. 
 
 Mr. Spencer goes on to consider : " If the compound 
 molecules of the blood, or of an organism considered in 
 the aggregate, have the power of moulding into their own 
 type, the matters which they absorb as nutriment, and if, 
 as Mr. Paget points out, they have the power, when their 
 type has been changed by disease, of moulding all materials 
 afterwards received into the modified type, may we not 
 reasonably suspect that the more or less specialised mole- 
 cules of each organ have, in like manner, the power of 
 moulding the materials which the blood brings to them 
 into similarly specialised molecules ? The repair of a 
 wasted tissue may therefore be considered as due to forces 
 analogous to those by which a crystal reproduces its lost 
 apex when placed in a solution like that from which it was 
 formed. In either case, a mass of units of a given kind 
 shows a power of integrating with itself diffused units of the 
 same kind ; the only difference being, that the organic 
 mass of units arranges the diffused units into special com- 
 pound forms before integrating them with itself. In the 
 case of the crystal, this reintegration is ascribed to polarity 
 a power of whose nature we know nothing. Whatever 
 be its nature, however, it appears probable that the power 
 by which organs repair themselves from the nutritive 
 matters circulating through them is of the same order." 
 
 And the hypothesis is supported by the regeneration of 
 lost parts. 
 
 " If when the leg of a lizard has been amputated, there 
 presently buds out the germ of a new one, which, passing 
 through phases of development like those of the original 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. IOI 
 
 leg, eventually assumes a like shape and structure, we 
 assert nothing more than what we see when we assert that 
 the organism as a whole exercises such power over the 
 newly-forming limb as makes it a repetition of its pre- 
 decessor. If a leg is produced where there was a leg, and 
 a tail where there was a tail, we have no alternative but to 
 conclude that the aggregate forces of the body control the 
 formative processes going on in each part. And on con- 
 templating these facts in connection with various kindred 
 ones, there is suggested the hypothesis that the form of 
 each species of organism is determined by a peculiarity in 
 the constitution of its units that these have a special 
 structure in which they tend to arrange themselves, just as 
 have the simpler units of inorganic matter. 
 
 The regeneration of the whole body from a detached 
 somatic fragment, in the cases of Begonia and Hydra^ is 
 here described. 
 
 Mr. Spencer proceeds : 
 
 " We have no alternative but to say that the living 
 particles composing one of these fragments have an innate 
 tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of the organ- 
 ism to which they belong. We must infer that a plant or 
 animal of any species is made up of special units, in all of 
 which there dwells the intrinsic aptitude to aggregate into 
 the form of that species ; just as in the atoms of a salt there 
 dwells the intrinsic aptitude to crystallise in a particular 
 way. It seems difficult to conceive that this can be so ; 
 but we see that it is so. For this property there is no fit 
 term. If we accept the word polarity as a name for the 
 force by which inorganic units are aggregated into a form 
 peculiar to them, we may apply this word to the analogous 
 force displayed by organic units. But, as above admitted, 
 polarity, as ascribed to atoms, is but a name for something 
 of which we are ignorant a name for a hypothetical pro- 
 perty which as much needs explanation as that which it is 
 used to explain nevertheless, in default of another word, 
 
102 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 we must employ this, taking care, however, to restrict its 
 meaning." (" Principles of Biology Waste and Repair.") 
 
 And at a later place Mr. Spencer reviews the whole theory. 
 
 " Setting out with these physiological units, the existence 
 of which various organic phenomena compel us to recognise, 
 and the production of which the general law of evolution 
 thus leads us to anticipate, we get an insight into the 
 phenomena of Genesis, Heredity, and Variation. If each 
 organism is built of certain of these highly plastic units 
 peculiar to its species units which slowly work towards an 
 equilibrium of their complex polarities in producing an 
 aggregate of the specific structure, and which are at the 
 same time slowly modifiable by the reactions of this 
 aggregate we see why the multiplication of organisms 
 proceeds in the several ways and with the various results 
 which naturalists have observed. Heredity, as shown not 
 only in the repetition of the specific structure, but in the 
 repetition of ancestral deviations from it, becomes a matter 
 of course ; and it falls into unison with the fact that, in 
 various simpler organisms, lost parts can be replaced, and 
 that, in still simpler organisms, a fragment can develop into 
 a whole." (" Principles of Biology," vol. i., p. 287.) 
 
 With these extracts before one, the self-contradiction on 
 the point of identity is plain. The units throughout any one 
 organism must be identical with one another (if the theory 
 is to stand), with that abstract identity which absolutely 
 excludes differences. For the same purpose they must be 
 different from one another. It is hardly fair to lay any 
 stress on the well-worn crystal metaphor, but it is plain 
 that it requires identity throughout. But this is more 
 evident when the theory is supported by the regeneration of 
 lost parts. In that process we have the production of what 
 is externally dissimilar to the rest. But the new part, be- 
 cause it completes the definite specific image, is produced 
 by means of an inner identity with the rest. When a part 
 has been removed, it grows again into the normal form, 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 103 
 
 only because the units distinctive of the individual and not 
 of the part concerned are the stuff for its repair. The lizard's 
 tail is regenerated by lizard units, not by tail units, nor even, 
 as I understand, by lizard tail units. Much more is the 
 abstract identity of the units of an individual necessary to 
 Mr. Spencer's exposition of reproduction from a somatic frag- 
 ment. The bit of Begonia leaf is made up of, or contains, 
 not particularised leaf units, but universal Begonia stuff; it 
 seems, indeed, to be the identical units of the whole 
 Begonia, merely appearing as leaf because of their circum- 
 stances, and ready, when these change, to become a whole 
 plant of many differences. The substance for this theory 
 must preserve its universality throughout intact. Otherwise, 
 why base the theory on the reproduction of differences from 
 an inner identity ? If we have not identity in these agents, 
 what have we ? 
 
 But there is also an individuality of special organs, and 
 the system is driven to give us organ units also. We have 
 read of " units exactly like in kind to those of which each 
 organ consists," and of a well-marked difference between 
 organs as regards the structure or " polarity " of these 
 elements. For organs repair themselves, and may repro- 
 duce themselves wholly by division. There are therefore 
 leaf units, so distinguished not merely in virtue of their 
 position and relations, but in virtue of their " polarity " or 
 inner nature. These have therefore ceased to be Begonia 
 universal units. But every organ is made up of a variety 
 of tissues, which are themselves organs in as true a sense ; 
 these tissues are cellular ; and the cells contain organs, 
 nucleus, centrosome, envelope ; nor are even these simple, 
 but contain ordered parts which change and yet retain their 
 special image. Has every system then, into which you may 
 sub-divide and cross-divide the body, its own units of 
 special " polarity," as well as the units of every system 
 which includes it as a part, and finally the omnipresent 
 units of the whole body ? I think that the theory would 
 
104 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 not go so far as to say that. Therefore, if the physiological 
 units are not identical throughout, answering to the univer- 
 sality of the whole body, and if they are not present in 
 various grades, answering to every concrete universal, we 
 will suppose them to be different in every part, answering to 
 the differences of the body. In that case their differences 
 are indeed great. My cartilage is more like the cartilage of 
 the skate than it is like my epithelium. And I suppose that 
 the same would be true of the respective units of these 
 organs, and of their "polarities." And if that is the case, 
 then what is the significance of the units at all ? 
 
 Therefore, where the theory is merely vague, we must in- 
 troduce a distinction. The author now treats the units as 
 identical throughout the individual, and he necessarily does 
 so. Again, and with the same necessity, he treats them as 
 different. And we find that the body is not large enough 
 to contain units answering to every difference and to every 
 identity, so that our distinction cannot be a numerical one. 
 The only possible form which remains to it is the logical 
 form of universal and particular, the form of an ideal dis- 
 tinction. The units are different when considered in rela- 
 tion to the differences of the body, but they are identical 
 when considered in relation to the ideal identity of these 
 differences. When a distinction is thus substituted for the 
 vague self-contradiction, the units themselves present that 
 problem of the organism for the satisfaction of which they 
 were invented. They have the two aspects of identity and 
 difference, and can no longer be the identity for the given 
 differences of the body, so that they become useless. 
 
 But, because the logical distinction is clear in the given 
 body, these elements are introduced to hide it. They cover 
 a distinction which is the subject of the problem by taking 
 it into their double form of contradiction. We have no 
 longer to ask what is the nature of this identity, which is 
 given in the body, or what is its relation to the parts and 
 qualities. We are told that those particulars are the mani- 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. IO5 
 
 festaiion of (particular and different) units, and that these 
 same units (being not different but identical with one another, 
 and in virtue of that identity alone) are the inner identity 
 throughout the body which is necessary to the Begonia and 
 lizard in question. 
 
 This is a good example of the method of explanation by 
 hypothetical agents, showing how the latter, when analysed, 
 imply a self-contradiction, and showing also that it is only 
 in virtue of that self-contradiction that the hypothetical 
 theory can even appear to answer the problem. Insist on 
 either side of the contradiction alone, and the theory falls 
 to the ground. Regard the universality and the particularity 
 of the units as mere logical aspects of them, and it merely 
 becomes superfluous, because it unnecessarily repeats the 
 problems of the body which we know, in elements which we 
 cannot know and of which there is no reason to suppose 
 the existence. Use the units in one sentence as barely 
 identical with one another and in the next as barely 
 different, without turning the vague inconsistency into a 
 distinction, and you have the most perfect of all modern 
 theories as to the determination of the form of the in- 
 dividual. 
 
 But we have another difficulty in accepting Mr. Spencer's 
 theory. Even if the units were identical throughout they 
 would still fail to give us individuality. For they would 
 still be different from one another with a numerical differ- 
 ence. And being thus parts of a whole, they must, in pro- 
 portion as the whole is more truly individual, be more 
 completely specialised. An endless repetition of similars 
 cannot give individuality to the whole. As Mr. Bosanquet 
 says : " A structure however complex which repeats itself 
 homogeneously throughout all atoms of a certain substance 
 tends to confer individuality, if at all, on the minute units 
 in which the complex structure exists, but neither on the 
 substance as such nor on its larger fragments ; the supposed 
 minute structure is not the structure of it or of them, but 
 
106 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 only a structure repeated within it or them." (" Logic," i., 
 138.) 
 
 And it is in this point that the great weakness of the 
 familiar crystal metaphor lies. It is true that a crystalline 
 substance comes out, with more or less water, into a 
 definite form or into one of two or more forms. A crystal 
 within its proper solution will also regenerate lost parts. 
 But its constituent elements are similar to one another 
 throughout, and their difference is only numerical. It is 
 to the end no more truly one crystal than it is two or many. 
 In these important respects it differs from the organic form. 
 For the parts of the organism are, as we saw, heterogeneous, 
 and their unity is the unity, not of substance, but of end. 
 The only unity which we can find for the organism, and the 
 only identity given in its differences is an ideal unity and 
 identity, a kind of unity that is simply impossible with 
 homogeneity of parts. Organic individuality implies the 
 exact contrary to the identity of the elements of the crystal, 
 with which it is so often compared. 
 
 WEISMANN'S THEORY OF IDIOPLASM. 
 
 In this theory, which is the most elaborate of all its class, 
 we have a hypothetical mechanism for the " transmission 
 of qualities " in inheritance, and for their working out in the 
 development of the individual. There is a different agent 
 in the germ for every part of the body, and the agent 
 " carries " the qualities of the part to which it goes ; it 
 "controls" the cell which is its final resting place. 
 Further, the agents can remain inactive, during all the 
 time in which they are being distributed, by cell division, to 
 their respective proper fields of action. Weismann insists, 
 and probably with reason, on the necessity of such a theory 
 to a theory of adaptation by transformation. He says : 
 
 "The germ-plasm is an extremely delicately formed 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. IO/ 
 
 organic structure a microcosm in the true sense of the 
 word in which each independently variable part present 
 throughout ontogeny is represented by a vital particle, each 
 of which again has its definite inherited position, structure, 
 and rate of increase a theory of evolution appears to me to 
 be only possible in this sense" . . . "All the more essential 
 differences in the structure of organisms depend on this 
 fact. The determinants are particles on whose nature that 
 of the corresponding parts in the fully formed body de- 
 pends, whether the latter consists of a single cell or of 
 several or many cells. The assumption of such particles is 
 inevitable in a theory of heredity" (" Germplasm/' p. 91.) 
 
 A considerable difference between this scheme and that 
 of de Vries is already noticeable. Whereas the latter takes 
 account of all qualities, and assigns to each its vehicle, 
 Weismann's theory has chiefly to do with morphological 
 qualities. His determinants go to cells, and each deter- 
 minant undertakes the manifestation of all the qualities of 
 its cell. The scheme is purely morphological, and takes no 
 account of function, but we shall see that this abstraction 
 from function is necessary to the method, and, indeed, is 
 the more necessary the more perfectly the method is 
 applied. 
 
 This germ-plasm is the " hereditary substance," and it is 
 situated in the nucleus. It answers to the principle of 
 identity in this case as in others, and this character is its 
 real impulse. But its professed and explicit derivation is 
 not convincing, and depends merely on the complexity of 
 the arrangements of the chromatin within the nucleus, and 
 upon the fact that this substance is halved very accurately 
 (as, however, are all other structures in most cases) in 
 karyokinetic division. The derivation is as follows : 
 
 " We know that the nucleus contains a substance which, 
 even with the imperfect means of observation at our disposal, 
 is seen to be extremely complex, and that it becomes 
 modified in a very remarkable manner after every cell 
 
108 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 division, only to be again transformed at the approach of 
 the following division. We can, moreover, observe that the 
 cell is provided with a special apparatus which evidently 
 enables it to halve this substance very accurately. The 
 statement that this substance is the hereditary substance can 
 therefore hardly be considered as an hypothesis any longer." 
 (P. 29.) This substance is therefore a complex apparatus 
 for the transmission of morphological qualities and for the 
 working out of them in ontogeny. 
 
 " According to our view, the power of transmission which 
 is possessed by all organisms, and on which the development 
 of the higher organic forms is based therefore depends on 
 simple growth merely in the case of the very lowest conceiv- 
 able organisms with which we are not acquainted ; while in all 
 forms which have already undergone differentiation, it 
 results from the possession of a special apparatus for trans- 
 mission" (P. 466.) 
 
 And the nature of this apparatus is such that " the germ 
 cell contains at least as many determinants as there are dif- 
 ferent cells or groups of cells in the fully formed organism 
 which are capable of being individually determined from the 
 germ onward." (P. 467.) 
 
 " The histological character of every cell in a multicellular 
 organism, including its rate and mode of division, is con- 
 trolled by such a determinant. The germ-plasm does not, 
 however, contain a special determinant for every cell ; but 
 cells of a similar kind, when, like the blood cells, they are 
 not localised, may be represented by a single determinant in 
 the germ-plasm. On the other hand, every cell, or group of 
 cells, which is to remain independently variable, must be 
 represented in the germ-plasm by a special determinant. 
 Were this not the case, the cell in question could only vary 
 in common with other cells which are controlled by the 
 same determinant. 
 
 "The germ cell of a species must contain -as many deter- 
 minants as the organism has cells or groups of cells which 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 109 
 
 are independently variable from the germ onwards, and 
 these determinants must have a definite mutual arrangement 
 in the germ-plasm, and must therefore constitute a definitely 
 limited aggregate, or higher vital unit, the c id.' (P. 452.) 
 
 " These determinants control the cell by breaking up into 
 biophors which migrate into the cell body through the 
 pores of the nuclear membrane, multiply there, arrange 
 themselves according to the forces within them, and deter- 
 mine the histological structure of the cell. But they only 
 do so after a certain definitely prescribed period of develop- 
 ment, during which they reach the cell which they have to 
 control." (P. 76.) 
 
 The nature of this "control " is as follows : 
 "We suppose that the process in the idioplasm which 
 brings about the ontogeny of a multicellular organism is due 
 to the thousands of determinants, which constitute the 
 germ-plasm of the fertilised ovum, becoming systematically 
 separated into groups, and distributed among the successors 
 of the egg-cell. This separation into smaller and smaller 
 groups of determinants continues to take place, until each 
 cell contains determinants of one sort only, and these then 
 either control a single cell, or in case the hereditary character 
 (' determinate') is constituted by a group of cells with a 
 common origin, the control is exerted over this whole group." 
 And the whole matter is summed up thus : 
 " The theory of heredity which has now been formulated, 
 and more especially that portion of it which concerns the 
 composition of the germ-plasm out of determinants, and the 
 gradual disintegration of the mass of determinants in the 
 germ-plasm during the course of ontogeny is based on the 
 assumption that the cells control themselves : that is to say, 
 the fate of the cells is determined by forces situated within 
 them, and not by external influences. The primary cells of 
 the ectoderm and of the endoderm arise by the division of 
 the fertilised egg-cell and its contained germ-plasm, because 
 the determinants of the ectoderm are passed into one cell 
 
1 10 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 and those of the endoderm into, the other, and not because 
 some external influence, such as the force of gravity, affects 
 the cells in a different manner. Similarly a certain cell in a 
 subsequent embryonic stage does not give rise to a nerve, 
 a muscle, or an epithelial-cell because it happens to be so 
 situated as to be influenced by certain other cells in one 
 way or another, but because it contains special determinants 
 for nerve, muscle, or epithelial-cells." (P. 134.) 
 
 It is not necessary to go into any of the details of the 
 theory. The independence of parts is essential to it. Each 
 cell is controlled by its determinant agents ; it is controlled, 
 or determined, by " forces within it." Therefore cells are 
 not in any way determined by surrounding cells, nor are the 
 present states of cells determined by their former states. 
 There is a complete abstraction from functional activity of 
 parts, and even from such mechanical relations as stress and 
 strain, gravitation, etc. Each cell is the mere work of the 
 agent which controls it, and the successive stages of the or- 
 ganism appear to fly off from the system of agents as a 
 mere organism of appearance from a real organism having 
 no intelligible relations among themselves. 
 
 Now this theory gives us, as is always the case, agents 
 which are used alternately as pure identity and pure differ- 
 ence for the body. But in this case we have an attempt at 
 a picture of identity in difference. This is given in the 
 " architecture " of the germ-plasm. The determinants for 
 every part are in such a way fixed up together that they come 
 off, during cell divisions, in the right directions, in the right 
 kinds, and in the right proportions. Now this architecture 
 is a system of differences, every one of which " answers to " 
 a known difference. And the question arises whether we 
 may not have in this theory something like what may 
 reasonably be supposed to occur in the body. If the body 
 persistently has a certain unity manifest in a host of orderly 
 particulars, may the whole matter not be due to some such 
 system of microscopic police ? 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. Ill 
 
 Such a question might be answered from research. We 
 might base our denial on the fact that the division of the 
 early embryo into halves gives rise, not to two separate half- 
 images, but to two complete images each of which is of half 
 the normal mass, except in so far as development seems to 
 be disturbed in some cases by the abnormal want of material. 
 Or we might base our denial on the familiar Begonia leaf of 
 the arguments. A small portion of the leaf, we should say, 
 has been " determined " by its own determinants, and con- 
 tains only its own determinants, so how can it give rise to 
 the whole plant ? Or we might quote such an expert in 
 the nucleus as Verworn, who, very naturally, finds that the 
 changes in the nucleus are just as much referable to the 
 changes in the cytoplasm as the latter are conditioned by 
 the former. But such answers are hopeless. To the two 
 first Weismann is ready to object that within the broken 
 piece of the organism there is the whole police force, only 
 that all of its members which are not concerned with that 
 particular beat have been asleep, until an abnormal disrup- 
 tion calls them out. And to our third objection the answer 
 would be that even Verworn cannot seize the peculiar 
 activities of the determinants, and that they are unchanged 
 by cytoplasmic changes. I merely bring forward these three 
 objections from research to show how completely they are 
 not to the point when we are dealing with the biology of 
 hypothesis. 
 
 Our true answer is, that the action of the determinants, 
 being one-sided, is unknowable, for the reason that, if it 
 were known, it would be of such a kind that the determinant 
 would be reciprocally conditioned by the determinee. 
 Further, the conception of "inactive" determinants is a 
 wholly false one. If they are there at all, they are there, 
 and their influence counts for what it is worth. And if they 
 are without effect on what is there, then they are simply not 
 there. Do they not, even according to the hypothesis, 
 assimilate, excrete, and multiply? And is that not 
 
112 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 activity, with a specific effect, according to their natures, on 
 what is round them, and specifically conditioned, according 
 to their nature, by the rest of the organism? But let us 
 compare the determinant to an organism. Like the organ- 
 ism, the determinant can retain its proper form and func- 
 tions, and is the same determinant through all changes. It 
 is fed ; it reproduces itself. It is not homogeneous, but 
 contains many ordered differences, and in virtue of its 
 qualities it does its work. Now, all its qualities, you will 
 say, are surely not the mere results of one another, for if 
 they were, it would not retain its identity through all the 
 differences of its life any more than the organism would do, 
 if cells were conditioned by cells and stages by stages. 
 You, therefore, need another system of determinants to con- 
 trol the determinants of Weismann as soon as anything is 
 known about these, and to be the vehicles of their qualities ; 
 and you must then examine that new system in order to see 
 whether or no you need yet another. 
 
 NAEGELl'S THEORY OF IDIOPLASM. 
 
 In his great work, " Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie 
 der Abstammungslehre," Naegeli elaborates a most ingenious 
 theory of individuality and of the representation of qualities 
 by agents. In the last chapter we saw his dexterous 
 manipulation of qualities. He found for them, in their 
 supposed existence in the germ, a condition in which they 
 should be qualitatively similar, and yet in some way separate, 
 and therefore numerically distinct and quantitatively measur- 
 able. We have now to see what the measurable form of the 
 qualities is. " I think," says Naegeli, " of the qualities, 
 organs, arrangements, and functions, all of which can only 
 be perceived by us in a very complex form, as separated in 
 the idioplasm into their actual elements ; and the idioplasm 
 brings into being the specific appearance which is peculiar 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 113 
 
 to every organism by the necessary putting together of those 
 elements." (P. 45.) Or again : " We must conceive of the 
 idioplasm as bringing the foundations (Anlagen) for different 
 organs into development, in like manner as the pianist 
 brings, on his instrument, the successive harmonies and 
 discords of a score into expression. He always strikes the 
 same key for every A, and in the same way a special key 
 for every other note. So, in the idioplasm, the groups of 
 micellar rows lying side by side are like keys of which each 
 represents another elementary appearance (unit quality). If, 
 during the development of the individual, chlorophyll, or 
 rather the chromogen from which, by the action of light, 
 chlorophyll arises, is formed in any cell, the idioplasm there 
 is setting the chlorophyll-key into activity ; and in the same 
 manner, when there are formed in a cell either spiral or 
 dotted thickenings of the envelope, then the spiral-thread- 
 key or the dot-key is being struck." (P. 44.) I think we may 
 reasonably find in these expressions one old conception. 
 That is, an agent which on the one side is pure difference 
 each of its differences answering to one difference in the 
 known organism and on the other side is pure identity, 
 answering to the unity of the organism. I also think that 
 in this one point we may reasonably find the sole impulse 
 for and meaning of the theory, and that it is only in virtue of 
 this its fundamental method that it can explain anything 
 at all, and that it can explain everything which is organic. 
 And thirdly, the undeveloped ambiguity of the agent in this, 
 its only important respect, is necessary to the apparent 
 adequacy of the method. But let us see how the theory 
 works in particulars. The idioplasm is a highly complex 
 structure which is distributed throughout the body in the 
 form of a network. It forms part of the firmer portion of 
 the protoplasm. It consists of fibres which in their turn are 
 made up of subordinate units or micella. These ultimate 
 units are microscopically invisible crystals, each of which 
 consists of a greater or lesser number of molecules. " The 
 
 H 
 
114 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 micella are most regularly arranged in the crystalloids of the 
 albuminates, in some such way as the molecules are arranged 
 in crystals ; that is, in plane layers which cross each other 
 in three or more directions ; and also in straight rows of 
 micella which are arranged in three or more planes crossing 
 one another." The arrangement of layers and striation is 
 recognised in starch granules, and in membranes of plant 
 cells, where the visible layers split into two or more leaves. 
 On this ground, Naegeli speaks of a branching of micellar 
 layers or rows. Of such branching and growing fibres of 
 micella is the idioplasm composed. 
 
 We know the structure of the idioplasm in one dimension 
 only, that is, in the dimension answering to ontogeny. For 
 the fibres grow to an almost unlimited extent in the develop- 
 ment of the individual and in parthenogenetic reproduction. 
 Wherever there is not a variation, there the cross-section of 
 the idioplasmic fibre remains the same, and it only lengthens 
 itself to the necessary extent for the individual and its 
 descendants. Therefore, "the idioplasm is strictly arranged 
 in parallel rows, which closely adhere to one another, but 
 which grow by the interpolation of new micella, and thus 
 continually maintain a constant arrangement." So long as 
 this cross section of the fibre of parallel rows of micella 
 remains the same, so long the qualities of the individual 
 remain fundamentally, that is, as Anlagen, the same. But 
 " when one or more longitudinal rows branch or unite 
 because of a disturbance in their growth leading to a less 
 firm connection between them, then the number of the 
 longitudinal rows is increased or diminished, the configura- 
 tion of the idioplasmic system is altered, and thereupon an 
 alteration in qualities (Merkmal) arises. The constancy of 
 the qualities during a series of generations is only possible 
 when the micellar rows of the idioplasm maintain a strictly 
 parallel relation throughout the process of ontogeny. And 
 the alteration of qualities in the development of the race 
 requires on the other hand an increase in the number or an 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 11$ 
 
 alteration in the arrangement of the micellar rows, without 
 which a new foundation cannot take its place in the idio- 
 plasmic system." 
 
 I shall not enter further into this quasi-histological hypo- 
 thesis, which is fully elaborated with the aid of ingenious 
 diagrams in the book. For all this part of the theory is 
 merely there in order to tack on the agent to something 
 which might be supposed to have, even though it has not, 
 a phenomenal existence. It is more important to see what 
 these Anlagen are in relation to qualities than to guess what 
 they might be in relation to molecules. Now, the idioplasm 
 is nothing but all the qualities reflected in another form ; it 
 is both appearances and possible appearances existing as 
 actual things which are not appearances but are something 
 else. 
 
 " Every perceptible quality is present in the idioplasm 
 as a foundation (Anlage\ and there are therefore as many 
 different kinds of idioplasm as there are combinations of 
 qualities. Every individual has arisen from an idioplasm 
 which is somewhat differently fashioned, and in the same 
 individual every organ and every portion of an organ owes 
 its origin to a peculiar modification, or rather to a peculiar 
 condition of the idioplasm. The idioplasm, which, at 
 least during a certain stage of development, is distributed 
 throughout the body, has therefore at every point a special 
 peculiarity ; in that it produces, for instance, here a branch, 
 there a flower, a root, a foliage leaf, a petal, an anther, the 
 foundation for a seed, a hair, a thorn." (P. 23.) The idio- 
 plasm, in fact, just consists of foundations, potentialities, 
 Anlagen. And, where different appearances are, there are 
 different " pecularities " of the idioplasm ; difference for 
 difference, it corresponds to the sum total of the known 
 differences of the body, whether these are at the time in 
 appearance or only in possibility. " The idioplasm of the 
 germ is like the microcosmic copy of the macrocosmic or 
 developed individual; for as the latter is made up of organs, 
 
Il6 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 systems of tissues, and cells, so is the former made up, in 
 proportion, of hosts of micella which are bound together 
 into higher units of different orders and represent the 
 foundations for these cells, systems of tissues, and organs." 
 (P. 26.) But the idioplasm is not merely in the germ ; it 
 is throughout the grown body. It is not merely in the 
 germ that the qualities exist as separately represented and 
 as numerable, although we saw in the last chapter how 
 Naegeli goes to the germ to justify his conception of the 
 independence of qualities. No difference in the body but 
 it has an idioplasmic difference to answer to it and to bring 
 !t, at the right time and place, into appearance. But this 
 agent, like all the others, is not alone mere difference. 
 Nor is it identity in difference, but is mere difference and 
 mere identity confused. And we have to see on what 
 principle its differences are arranged together within the 
 unity of the organism. Naegeli is clear in his theory as 
 to the conditions of the coming into appearance of the 
 possible qualities as carried by the agent. The conditions 
 stimulate the idioplasm, and it meets them with the suitable 
 quality ; and this conception leads to very remarkable 
 qualities in the agent. For we find the idioplasm, during 
 the development of the theory, driven at last to become a 
 quasi-psychical principle. 
 
 With regard to the conditions of the development of this 
 or that quality, Naegeli says: "In reproduction the organism 
 inherits the totality of its qualities (Eigenschafteri] as 
 idioplasm. In the germ cell the qualities (Merkmale) of 
 all its ancestors are enclosed as foundations (Anlageri). 
 But the various foundations have a very disparate signifi- 
 cance as regards their prospects of coming into development. 
 For while some arrive at development always and without 
 exception, others, under certain circumstances, remain un- 
 developed. In cases of the alternation of generations, for 
 example, certain morphological and physiological qualities 
 only appear in special generations, while they remain in the 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 117 
 
 form of foundations (Anlagezustand) through a hundred 
 successive generations. There are such qualities as only 
 become actual under favourable outer conditions, remaining 
 latent through whole aeons (Erdperioden) because these 
 influences are wanting. (Thus certain Alpine Hieracice 
 show, when cultivated in gardens, a remarkable anomaly 
 in respect of branching in the second or summer shoots of 
 every year; in the Alps only spring shoots are formed, 
 on account of the shortness of the time for vegetation, 
 while the summer shoots never come into development.) 
 Many foundations are reciprocally correlated or exclusive, 
 so that the development of one of them either occasions or 
 hinders the development of the other." (P. 24.) 
 
 Anything which is possible, although it may not appear 
 for aeons, is thus present as a separate foundation in the 
 idioplasm. And it is worthy of notice that sometimes 
 even often the actual presence of one quality conditions 
 another quality, which is then in the relation of reciprocity 
 to the first. In all cases where that is so, the " because" 
 of one quality lies in the other, and there would be no need 
 of the idioplasm, except that it is through the idioplasm, that 
 is, through the unity of the organism, that the qualities in 
 such cases affect one another; just as it is through the 
 idioplasm alone that external conditions affect the coming 
 into appearance of this or that quality. The agent, of its 
 own movement, directs the apparent body, taking the 
 grounds for its particular action from external conditions 
 and from the qualities which it already has on show, but its 
 movement is not explicable from those conditions and those 
 qualities. It has left its quasi-histological derivation, and 
 is no longer even primum inter paria ; it is of a different 
 order altogether from phenomenal qualities and changes. 
 "The changes which the impulse to formation (Bildungstrieb} 
 unfolds in the successive stages of the development of the 
 individual and in the various parts of the individual, can le 
 conditioned by nothing except by the successive modifica- 
 
Il8 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 tions in the idioplasm, and by the likewise changing 
 circumstances under which the idioplasm brings its founda- 
 tions into development." (P. 32.) All that occurs in the 
 individual is brought about by the idioplasm, which brings 
 into light this or that quality out of its store of foundations. 
 We are coming to see that the idioplasm is not that store of 
 foundations, but that it has the store of possibilities. For 
 if the possibilities, in this quasi-actual form of theirs, merely 
 struggled for the right to appear, we should in the first place 
 not have the order which Naegeli so truly makes the thing to 
 be explained, and in the second place, we should not have 
 that identity present in all the differences, which is necessary 
 to the explanation of the organic form itself, and especially 
 to the barest account of reproduction and of the regenera- 
 tion of lost parts. The idioplasm has at first been described 
 as a set of differences answering to the differences of the 
 body. " It has at every point a special peculiarity ; in that 
 it produces, for instance, here a branch, there a flower, 
 a root, a leaf, or a thorn." We are now to find it mere 
 identity instead of mere difference. One author says : " We 
 cannot be surprised that the idioplasm is differently 
 influenced in root, stem, and leaf; or that, notwithstanding 
 its perfect material identity, the idioplasm brings to develop- 
 ment, in these three different parts different foundations, but 
 in their lawful order. We conceive that the nutritive 
 conditions in general, although unable to make any 
 qualitative alteration in the idioplasm, yet have an effect 
 on the development of the foundations, inasmuch as, accord- 
 ing to the quality and the quantity of the food, foundations 
 may appear which would otherwise remain latent, and others 
 which normally appear may be kept back." (P. 52.) 
 
 With this bare identity for the idioplasm, a somersault in 
 theory which would be surprising if it had not been 
 expected as necessary to the method, there comes in the 
 possibility of an explanation of the orderliness and intelli- 
 gibility of organic differences. The work of the idioplasm 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 1 19 
 
 appears as "in lawful order," and the order is there because 
 the idioplasm is one and identical. The agent is no 
 longer a mere store of differences corresponding to pheno- 
 menal differences; it has become, by self-contradiction, 
 materially the same under all the differences. It was a 
 manifold, it is now a unity, in respect of quality. This is 
 the essential self-contradiction which we remarked in Mr. 
 Spencer's theory of physiological units. But now that the 
 agent has taken on its character of identity, let us look at 
 its functions. " The idioplasm," says Naegeli, " which is 
 enclosed in the cells of given stages of ontogeny, directs 
 the development of those foundations which answer to 
 the surrounding circumstances." All the foundations are 
 there present, and the idioplasm takes account of the cir- 
 cumstances, and brings the right Anlage into appearance at 
 the right time and in the right place ; it undertakes the 
 lawful order which we saw above. And this it can only do 
 as one identity, if the thing is not done by the whole. It is 
 not, after all, a group of foundations, but one foundation, 
 and it was a mistake to suppose that it was different in 
 different parts of the organism. And as a unity, the idio- 
 plasm is the origin of everything in the organism, yet not 
 immediately the origin of everything after all. For "it is 
 not necessary to assume that all molecular changes in the 
 organism are separately impelled by the idioplasm ; for in 
 many cases that process would be limited to the setting of 
 some of them in motion, whence a whole series of pro- 
 cesses would follow in necessary consequences." Where 
 "necessary consequence" can be found, plainly the agent 
 is not needed. Its part is to do miracle, to interpose as 
 deus ex ma china ; and from its actions whatever conse- 
 quences are necessary will of course follow. Only, its 
 action is the necessary consequence of nothing whatever. 
 For the action of abstract identity upon the abstract differ- 
 ences is miracle, a miracle which has puzzled men in more 
 sciences than one or two. 
 
120 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 But the mere presence of a structural identity through- 
 out the whole body, such as this network of micellar fibres 
 bound together in parallel rows of which the cross section 
 is always the same, is hardly adequate to the matter. For 
 the one idioplasm rules the whole body, and a change here 
 must be answered by another, and perhaps dissimilar, but 
 always purposive, change there. Positively the network 
 must be fitted with more than a mere histological identity 
 through all its parts, in order to be a true principle of 
 teleological activity. Every local change must be reflected, 
 somehow, in the unity of the organism, and must be 
 followed by activities which shall work the right and answer- 
 ing changes where they are needed. " Have we any guide," 
 says the theorist, " and are there any instances in nature of 
 a manifold which is ever reflected into unity?" The 
 answer is close at hand. I quote Naegeli. " We may 
 borrow an analogy from the movement which reproduces 
 sense impressions and voluntary movements by the nerves. 
 If the organised albuminates carry the most manifold per- 
 ceptions of foreign objects in the finest degrees to the 
 brain, and, producing there a clearly corresponding image, 
 occasion in consequence answering movements, we may 
 fairly assume that the organised albuminates of the idio- 
 plasm carry an image of their particular local changes to 
 other parts of the organism, and there work out a change 
 corresponding to the image. This theory of dynamic 
 communication seems to me most simply to solve the 
 questions which we have met. The idioplasm of all the 
 cells of a plant is in immediate connection throughout. 
 Every change which it suffers at any point will be perceived 
 throughout and turned to account in a suitable manner. 
 We must even assume that the stimulus which affects one 
 point is immediately telegraphed over the whole body, and 
 has at every point its just effect, for there is a continual 
 balancing of the states of tension and of movement of the 
 idioplasm. This continuous and universal feeling, which 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 121 
 
 the idioplasm subserves, throws light on the otherwise 
 astonishing fact that, in spite of the great dissimilarity of 
 the conditions of nutrition and stimulation to which an 
 organism is exposed in its various parts, the idioplasm yet 
 retains, through all developments and changes, a perfectly 
 identical form, as we see from the fact that the cells of the 
 root, stem, and leaf, all produce the same individuals. 
 The idioplasmic system of plants, which is common also to 
 animals in the same manner, would thus be in many 
 respects analogous to the nervous system. It would be, if 
 I may so speak, a system of dynamic conductivity in a 
 simpler and more material kind, while the nervous system 
 gives us such a system of conductivity in a more complex 
 and spiritual kind. Indeed, it is not unlikely that there is 
 a phylogenetic connection between the two, in this respect, 
 that in the animal kingdom one half of the idioplasmic 
 system has by degrees become a nervous system." (P. 59.) 
 Thus does the idioplasm become a quasi-psychical prin- 
 ciple; and the mere structural identity of the network 
 throughout the body is found to be inadequate to the unity 
 of the organism. And although the " dynamic conduc- 
 tivity " of the idioplasm is called " simple and material " in 
 contrast to the more " spiritual " activity of nerves, I think 
 it remains evident that the unity into which the manifold 
 differences of the organism are reflected is, according to the 
 paragraph, a unity of an essentially psychical kind. It is 
 the continuous and universal feeling which is the secret of the 
 perfect identity of the body; and by it "every change 
 suffered at any point," that is, every difference, is perceived 
 throughout. It is not necessary to study Naegeli's metaphor 
 further than to make clear this point, that the idioplasm is 
 like the nervous system, in respect that the latter is organic 
 to the reflection of differences into the unity of con- 
 ceptions, and that this point of resemblance is the only im- 
 portant and indeed essential one. It is in respect of this 
 point of analogy that the idioplasm provides for the right 
 
122 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 and suitable reaction of this difference in answer to that 
 difference. And because Naegeli's theory here passes 
 essentially into the class of theories which deal with quasi- 
 psychical agents, I shall leave the consideration of the 
 unity of the organism as a unity of feeling to its proper 
 place. But we may return for a moment to the analogy of 
 the pianist, on page 113, and notice that it alone fully 
 answers to this scheme. And it gives us, first, the sounds, 
 answering to the manifold differences of appearance ; then, 
 the keys, answering to the idioplasm as mere differences ; 
 then, the pianist, answering to the idioplasm as abstract 
 identity ; and lastly, the score, answering to the ideal unity 
 in multiplicity. Now, the analogy differs from the known 
 body in one respect, that it inserts, between the phenomenal 
 differences and the ideal unity, two steps ; I mean, the 
 abstract difference of the keys and the abstract identity of 
 the pianist. And Naegeli's theory, like all other theories 
 of ontogeny, exists only in order to insert those two 
 steps. 
 
 I shall merely mention one more hypothesis in this kind, 
 that of Brooks. This theory, which is a modification of the 
 theory of pangenesis, begins by the clearest possible state- 
 ment of our second postulate. Its author lays down the 
 following foundation on its first page: "The ovum is a 
 cell which has gradually acquired a complicated organisa- 
 tion, and which contains material particles of some kind to 
 correspond to each of the hereditary qualities of the organ- 
 ism." One could not better express the independence of 
 organic qualities as numerable units ; nor the carrying of 
 each of them by an agent, which yet is not itself quality. 
 The "gradually acquired" very slowly, by insensible grada- 
 tions, through long ages is sufficient provision against any 
 objections which might be brought from the rights of 
 physiology, or indeed from any other point of view. Can 
 this be included in the independent " rights of every 
 science in its own sphere," that a theory should begin with 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 123 
 
 a statement like the above postulate, as with a matter of 
 common experience which admits of no questioning ? 
 
 THEORIES OF QUASI-PSYCHICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 In his review of that metaphysical doctrine which we 
 have found to be responsible for modern biology, Dr. Caird 
 paraphrases one of its results as follows : " We can con- 
 ceive an external connection of things as acting upon each 
 other; we can conceive a determination of that external 
 connection by an intelligent being which uses it to realise 
 some purpose or end ; but we cannot, according to Kant, 
 form any definite conception of that, which yet seems to be 
 set before us as a fact in organic beings, namely, of a unity 
 which produces the differences of its parts and reveals it- 
 self in their determination by each other. In short, we 
 cannot think of a unity that reveals itself in difference ex- 
 cept as an intelligence ; and if we think of it as an intel- 
 ligence, we cannot think of it as itself the source of the 
 differences which it apprehends and on which it super- 
 induces its unity, but only as an artist working with a given 
 material." (Caird : " Critical Philosophy of Kant," vol ii., 
 p. 529.) 
 
 This way of thinking of the unity of a natural system is 
 that which has given rise to the ever recurring and ever 
 barren hypothesis of a quasi-psychical principle in the 
 organism, as the unity for its manifold parts and periods. 
 The multiplicity in question is an intelligible unity ; it is 
 therefore the work of an intelligent unit. The organic 
 part subserves an end ; it is therefore fashioned, maintained, 
 and prompted by one who is conscious of that end. Now, 
 it would serve no purpose to enumerate the hypotheses in 
 this kind from Bruno to Bunge, nor to point out their 
 unessential differences, for the point of view is quite 
 simple, and may be applied to anything organic in any 
 
124 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 way you like. But we must know why it is so fascinating 
 to men and reappears so inevitably, and we must find out 
 what it has to say for itself. Its most acute exponents are 
 Bunge and Hartmann. 
 
 In his famous tract on Vitalism and Mechanism, the 
 former lays down the familiar distinction between physical 
 and chemical processes on the one hand, and vital pro- 
 cesses on the other. Now, this antithesis is simply that 
 between changes which are and those which are not 
 referred to the individual or given in terms of the unity of 
 the organism. Yet to our author these are not different 
 aspects of one set of processes, but different processes 
 which exist side by side in the creature, excluding and 
 complementing one another. To him, therefore, there are 
 changes and forces in the body which are not capable of 
 the form of mechanical explanation, but which belong to a 
 different sphere from that of dead causes and effects. And 
 these other changes are quasi-psychical in origin. 
 
 Now, we may at once remark that we have here a certain 
 confusion. The physical and chemical processes, as me- 
 chanical) are to be set over against psychical processes, as in 
 some way not mechanical, but as free from reciprocity and 
 as conditioned only by ends. But there is no reason at all 
 for supposing that these two antitheses, between physical 
 and psychical, and between what is mechanically and what 
 is finally conditioned, do in any sense correspond to one 
 another. We have no reason for excepting psychical 
 processes from that form under which we include the rest 
 of the organism. Thinking is not miracle, any more than 
 " cerebration " is miracle, and, as a process, it is as much 
 in bondage to necessity as anything else is. How then does 
 Bunge expect that the purposefulness of the organic differ- 
 encesa matter which ex hypotJiesi cannot be accounted 
 for in terms of the physical processes in the parts is to be 
 accounted for in terms of the psychical processes in those 
 same parts? Certainly the purposefulness is that which 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 12$ 
 
 has to be explained, but the two kinds of processes which 
 are here distinguished do not differ in respect of that matter, 
 however much they may differ in respect of others. Both 
 are, if both exist, equally purposive in fact and equally 
 mechanical in derivation. And all that the theory seems 
 to do is to add to one set of processes another set which 
 does not at all help us in the explanation of the former. 
 
 Such an attempt to find the secret of system in the 
 abstract activity of understanding agents is not uncommon 
 in other spheres than that of biology. It is often assumed 
 that the orderly articulation of society depends immediately 
 on the well-informed activity of its government. Or its 
 order is understood to exist because of the knowledge of 
 that order in the minds of its citizens. Extreme cases of 
 this fallacy are seen in the propagation of abstract systems 
 for the form of society. But nothing could be further from 
 the mark than all this. Social system is a matter for 
 research ; its intricate coordinations cannot be exhausted ; 
 we do not know it all, and therefore work it out. It is an 
 intelligible system, but answers to no explicit system in an 
 intelligence. So far is abstract understanding from 
 regulating society, that theories of the state are wholly in 
 bondage to the form of the state existing. Our doctrine of 
 government is not the universal for all those particulars, it 
 is not the identity revealed in them ; it is itself only one 
 particular among the others, and is not necessarily even an 
 important one ; our political ideas are among the stones, 
 but they are not the architect. If we spoke of a mystery 
 of society as we commonly do of a mystery of life, we 
 should not succeed in tracing it to the functions of 
 politicians who should entirely understand all the differ- 
 ences, and so determine them into an intelligible unity. 
 We should not compare those functions with vital processes, 
 as existing among and as the unity for the mechanical 
 relations of those who are not politicians. Yet this is the 
 point of view of the theorists of quasi-psychical principles. 
 
126 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 "The mystery of life," says Bunge, "lies hidden in 
 activity. But the idea of action has come to us, not as the 
 result of sensory perceptions, but from self-observation, 
 from the observation of the will, as it occurs in our 
 consciousness and as it manifests itself to our internal sense. 
 When our external senses meet with this same activity, we 
 cannot recognise it. We see its results and accompaniments, 
 the various forms of motion, but the thing itself we do not 
 see. We have no organ for its perception, and we can only 
 hypothetically accept its existence, which we do when we 
 speak of ' active movement.' Every physiologist does so, 
 and he cannot work without such a conception. This is the 
 first attempt towards a psychological explanation of all vital 
 phenomena. We transfer to the objects of our sensory per- 
 ception, to the organs, tissue elements, and to every minute 
 cell, something which we have acquired from our own con- 
 sciousness." Certainly, " something from our own con- 
 sciousness " is . transferred, but that something is not 
 psychical processes hypothetically inserted among the other 
 processes in organic parts. 
 
 Conceive of an organism which has two parts, A and B. 
 Now, A and B can each be derived from physical processes. 
 We should be content with such a derivation if it were not 
 that A needs and is needed by B> and that they are adapted 
 to one another; and that the processes in the rise of each 
 of these elements are so complex and so various that we 
 cannot believe that the necessary end should have been so 
 accurately reached through a path beset by so many chances, 
 unless we suppose that there is in each of these elements 
 another set of processes of a different kind. These hypo- 
 thetical processes, then, in A, must be such as to affect and 
 to guide the physical processes. They must also be such 
 as to have a certain peculiar unity. For they are specially 
 concerned with leading up A to its final form, so that they 
 must include the conception of the later stages of A as end. 
 And they are concerned with making A to fit B so that they 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 127 
 
 must include the conception of the whole organism as end. 
 Now whatever conceptions may be included in the psychical 
 states of A, those conceptions are there because of its 
 physical and other states; or, in other words, they are 
 simply a part or a manifestation of its character, but are in 
 no sense its character to the exclusion of the other states of 
 A. There is no reason why A's psychical processes should 
 not affect its physical processes, but there is equally no 
 reason why the latter should not as much and in the same way 
 condition the former. In short, in so far as they have 
 actions on one another and no one-sided activity is con- 
 ceivable both sets of processes are together mechanical. 
 Therefore the physiology of the hypothetical play of physical 
 and psychical processes in A, if an account could be given 
 of it, would destroy the value of the latter processes as 
 principle of the teleological direction of the part. Let A 
 think of B, and of its fitness for JB, all the time ; yet, that it 
 thinks of these things is due to all its other parts and pro- 
 cesses and functions, and not least to this, that it is already 
 one with B. The psychical states of a part are, for the 
 purpose in question, simply differences among other 
 differences, and cannot abstractly furnish us with its 
 identity. 
 
 It is evident that in thus attributing a quasi-psychical 
 principle to each system, or to each part of a system, we fail 
 of our object in two respects. We do not thereby gain an 
 expression for the unity of the organism, and we increase 
 its manifoldness. For the principle in question is nothing 
 more than one part, the most important part, if you like, 
 among others. There is nothing in the nature of psychical 
 changes which should fit them to bring the multiplicity 
 within which they exist into one. An intelligence is indeed 
 an identity in difference, and it is perhaps natural that we 
 should seek to insert such an intelligence into the organism, 
 as the agent of its identity. But an intelligence is the unity 
 of its own differences its own states ; there is no conceiv- 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVFRSITY 
 
128 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 able sense in which it should be the unity for the parts of 
 the body. 
 
 The whole method seems to depend on a confusion be- 
 tween reason of system and understanding of it, between the 
 unity of idea and the unity of a thinking agent. There is, 
 as Bunge says, something transferred from self-consciousness 
 to the system without, and that something is also, as he 
 says, certainly the origin of the conception of activity. But 
 what is thus imposed on the outer world is nothing but the 
 form of unity in multiplicity, it is no particular kind of 
 multiplicity. The true anthropomorphism is the anthropo- 
 morphism of category and not of hypothesis. It is one 
 thing to say that an organism is the product of reason, and 
 another to say that it is the work of a thinking agent within 
 it ; the former is a metaphysical, and the latter a psycho- 
 logical statement. And since it is the mere form of organic 
 life which is the ground for either, we can hardly avoid 
 classing the psychological hypothesis with the doctrines of 
 material vehicles, as a doctrine of anthropomorphic agents, 
 and as infected with all the fallacies of that form of hypo- 
 thesis. For there are no grounds for believing in the 
 existence of the quasi-psychical principle, except such as are 
 to be found in the intelligible form of the creature. It 
 does not phenomenally distinguish itself from the rest of 
 the body. It is, as Lotze has it, a homogeneous principle 
 from which nothing can be derived, since we have no minor 
 premisses to show why it should do this here, that there, and 
 that other in yet another place. And it is hardly necessary 
 to say that the attempts which are made to bring this quasi- 
 psychical functioning into connection with the nervous 
 system, or with the idioplasm, belong merely to the strange 
 shifts to which theory is put in order to bring the quasi- 
 phenomenal form of its agent into a pretence of probable 
 relation with phenomena. 
 
 Such, then, are the theories of the determination of indi- 
 vidual form which are given to us by the biology of 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 129 
 
 hypothesis. Let us examine first their relation to fact, and 
 then their general characteristics as a method. For the 
 former purpose we cannot bring up against them particular 
 facts which should disprove them, for their form is such that 
 they will admit any fact. But they treat fact always in a 
 certain manner, and we can observe whether their manner of 
 explanation is at all satisfactory in regard to the wealth and 
 variety of organic forms. We have already seen _that, to 
 them, all particulars are the same, and that the principle of 
 identity is fundamentally the same ; but it is conceivable 
 that, in practice, this very formal treatment of fact might 
 serve, if only provisionally, to unite different phenomena into 
 intelligible schemes. Therefore, we try the theories in re- 
 lation to the simplest animals. 
 
 There are, let us say, seven thousand species of Protozoa. 
 The variety of their forms is very great. There are naked 
 amoeboid forms, and others with variously constructed 
 simple or many-chambered shells of a siliceous, chitinous, 
 or calcareous nature, or built of foreign objects which the 
 animal has picked up. There is a vast number of spherical 
 forms with exquisitely fine straight processes and siliceous 
 skeletons of the most bewildering variety of plan. There 
 are forms which swim freely by means of one or two flagella, 
 or highly motile lashes, and there are others in which the 
 body is variously supplied with cilia for purposes of locomo- 
 tion, and of sweeping food in currents to the mouth. Alto- 
 gether, there are not only very numerous species, but the 
 differences between them are profound. Nothing can give 
 the student any adequate conception of the variety and 
 complexity of the Protozoa except a direct acquaintance 
 with some of them. If he knows anything about their 
 multitude, he will find that they have a peculiar significance 
 in relation to the theories of biology. For he will ask what 
 is the secret of their form, what is the inner difference 
 between species answering to that outer difference of marks, 
 and he will find that the customary " agent " deserts him 
 
 i 
 
130 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 where it seems to be most needed. And the reason is not 
 difficult to find. It is, simply, that you cannot divide up 
 these creatures, for theoretic purposes, into separate co- 
 operating cells, nor regard their form as being due to a 
 certain manner of cell divisions in ontogeny, nor regard 
 their qualities as carried by " vehicles of qualities " in 
 inheritance. You cannot, in short, in their case, delude 
 yourself with the belief that individuality in organisms is 
 a vain show due to the external action of an agent or system 
 of agents upon the passive material which is known to us 
 in research. Nor can you look at the changes of, say, a 
 ciliate, and regard the morphological category as adequate 
 to the expression of the differences between organisms. 
 For structure, in such cases as these, is not there in its 
 own right. 
 
 In the common process which is known as encystment, 
 the individual loses its form, and becomes a spherical 
 motionless mass, around which an envelope is excreted. 
 Within this capsule it may divide into two or more masses, 
 or into a great number of spores, or it may not divide at all. 
 On their release from the capsule the practically amorphous 
 individuals take on the specific form, sometimes in a few 
 moments. To what extent every detail of form is lost in 
 the process of encystment may be judged from the fact that 
 two or more individuals may coalesce with one another, 
 and form one spherical mass within the cyst. In many 
 species it is possible to severely mutilate the animal with a 
 knife, and the form will come again. In the division of a 
 ciliate you may find the new mouth and new cilia arising in 
 the posterior part of the lengthened body ; and as a con- 
 striction gradually divides the whole into two individuals, 
 the several organs for each one are separated from one 
 another and perfected. In such cases as those which I 
 have roughly described, the rise of form in the individual 
 takes place, out of formlessness, before your eyes. And 
 because that is so, it would be absurd to talk of the 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 131 
 
 separate parts as carried by a mechanism for inheritance. 
 Even if it does no more, the examination of the processes 
 of change in the Protozoa destroys some of the most fatal 
 refuges of ontogenetic theory. There is no conceivable 
 kind of modifications of protoplasm which could be the 
 ground of the essential difference between these seven 
 thousand forms. There can be no talk of the " gradual " 
 rise of structure in the individual by means of the orderly 
 coming into appearance of separate Anlagen. These forms, 
 at least, are truly individuals, and every part is seen to 
 depend on every other. There is but one Anlage, and that 
 Anlage is the whole, in every respect, and is no abstract 
 chemical or other aspect of it. In a word, structure in 
 such forms cannot be looked on as static, as we are accus- 
 tomed to regard the structure of Metazoa. It is continually 
 " becoming." And the very fact that in this group it is 
 difficult, or impossible, to assign an external use for every 
 part, brings into prominence that other fact, that there is 
 an internal necessity for every part. 
 
 Consider the variety of the Foraminifera alone. I do 
 not think any one would have the hardihood to say that 
 every one of those geometrically regular forms has special 
 advantages for the particular species, and therefore by no 
 other reason exists. The very fact of their geometrical 
 regularity points to necessities of structure rather than to 
 arbitrarily combined advantages of structure; and we are 
 not anxious to find several external places in nature for the 
 species which range from Uniloculina to Quinqueloculina^ 
 just because there is prima facie evidence of the intelligi- 
 bility of the actual and present formative processes which 
 obtain in the individual. Vorticellids and similar forms 
 may be exquisitely sculptured over their surfaces, and it is 
 evident that this adornment at least has nothing to do with 
 advantages to be gained by it, or with the attraction of 
 mates, where there is hardly sex and no sight. The numer- 
 ous species of the last named genus cannot be considered as 
 
132 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 having various respective advantages, in order to which 
 each one exists. The exuberant variety of form in the Pro- 
 tozoa is quite inexplicable under the theories of organic 
 evolution ; the actual fashioning and maintenance of that 
 form is untouched by the theories of ontogeny, and the 
 theory of the independence of organic differences would re- 
 quire no further refutation than the mere mention of this 
 group. I do not think that any biological hypothesis 
 promises to throw any light on the determination of form 
 in, say, the Rhizopoda or the Radiolaria. How is a body 
 which is, for this purpose, structureless, and has nothing 
 firm or rigid in it, whose substance is in a continually 
 streaming movement, and which has, in short, no structure 
 to begin with, to make this or that definite specific and 
 complex skeleton ? We do not know, and cannot guess at, 
 the physiological processes of all this, any more than we 
 can guess how a sponge makes its spicules or a holothurian 
 its elaborately designed plates and hooks and anchors, or 
 any more than we can give the most formal and bare 
 account of the immediate determination of any organic 
 form whatsoever. I believe that I am right in saying that 
 no explanation of the immediate existence of any morpho- 
 logical element has ever been made. And this fact, veiled 
 in the case of the Metazoa because in their case an external 
 significance for the structure can so easily be found or 
 feigned, lies open to us chiefly in the case of the unicellular 
 animals, in which we are at once forced to see that form 
 must have its rationale and to confess that this rationale is 
 hidden from us. 
 
 Not only form, but also habit (of which form is but a 
 function) lies before us in the Protozoa as a thing inexplic- 
 able by the hypotheses of biology, because we cannot in 
 this group allow of the indirect action of advantage on 
 structure or habit in phylogeny, as an adequate or sole 
 reason for any character. There is too obviously an im- 
 mediate reason, which, if it were known, would certainly 
 

 THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY./ 133 
 
 J 
 
 profoundly affect and limit the explanation by external ad- 
 vantage; and the hypothetical intermediaries between the 
 external advantage and the immediate presence of a 
 character, which work out the character independently of the 
 rest, are too obviously, in the case of these simple forms, 
 not present. In a word, we cannot here, as we can in the 
 multicellular animals, treat of a " character " as abstractly 
 in the species, but we must treat it first as concretely in the 
 individual. I do not deny that it is possible to insert such 
 an intermediary even into the individual. The immanent 
 soul does for theories of individual form and function what 
 the factors of organic evolution do for theories of the species; 
 they are both mechanisms by which the externally advan- 
 tageous comes to be done and to be made and to be main- 
 tained, in complete independence of considerations of inner 
 possibility and necessity, and thus in complete abstraction 
 from real process. It is therefore barely possible to make 
 external advantage the sole rationale of form and change, 
 even in the Protozoa. I will give the stock example, from 
 which it is commonly argued that the external advantage is 
 secured by special processes existing alongside of the pro- 
 cesses of mechanical necessity. Such cases as the following 
 are of course not in any sense unique, but they serve their 
 purpose particularly well because they are " marvellous." 
 Bunge thus refers to Engelmann's researches into the 
 movements of Arcella. " If a drop of water containing 
 arcellae be placed under the microscope, it often occurs 
 that one of them falls on its back, as it were, i.e., with the 
 convex side downwards on the slide, so that the pseudopodia 
 which appear at the edge of the shell cannot reach any 
 support. It is then observed that, near the edge on one 
 side, minute bubbles of gas make their appearance in the 
 protoplasm ; this side consequently becomes lighter, and 
 floats up, so that the animal now rests upon the opposite 
 sharp edge. It is now able, by means of its pseudopodia, 
 to grasp the slide, and thus completely to turn over, so that 
 
131 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 all the pseudopodia are downwards. The gas bubbles now 
 disappear, and the animal crawls away. If a little water 
 containing arcellae be dropped on the under side of a cover 
 glass, and the latter is placed over a small air chamber, it is 
 observed that the animalcules at first sink to the bottom of 
 the drops. If they find nothing to lay hold of, large bubbles 
 of gas are developed in the protoplasm, and, as they are 
 thus rendered specifically lighter than the water, they rise 
 in the drops. If they reach the surface of the glass in such 
 a position that they cannot attach themselves to it by their 
 pseudopodia, the gas bubbles are diminished on one side or 
 increased on the other (sometimes simultaneously on both) 
 until a tilting takes place, and the edge of the shell comes 
 in contact with the glass, and they are thus enabled to turn 
 over. When once this is accomplished, the bubbles again 
 disappear, and the animal can now crawl freely about the 
 glass. If the arcellse are carefully detached by means of a 
 needle, they at first fall to the bottom, and then go through 
 the same proceedings anew. Whatever attempt may be 
 made to put them into an inconvenient position, they are 
 always able, by the development of gas bubbles of appro- 
 priate size and at the proper spot, to right themselves, so 
 that they acquire a position favourable to locomotion ; 
 and the attainment of this object is always followed by 
 the disappearance of the bubbles. ' It cannot be denied,' 
 says Engelmann, 'that these facts point to psychical 
 processes in the protoplasm.' Whether this view of 
 Engelmann's is justified or not, I do not venture to de- 
 cide. I will even unreservedly admit that these remark- 
 able phenomena may find a mechanical explanation. I 
 have brought these facts to your notice merely in order 
 to show you what complex manifestations of life we 
 meet with, in cases where microscopical investigation has 
 already reached its limit, and how little it has at present 
 been possible to explain any single vital process on purely 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 135 
 
 mechanical grounds." (Bunge : " Phys. Chem.," Engl. 
 Trans., p. 9.) 
 
 A very great number of such examples are given by 
 Hartmann, and are, for him, in every case the peculiar 
 manifestations of the activity of the Unconscious. And, 
 in the case of the Protozoa, changes which have manifestly 
 an external advantage are frequently assigned to the special 
 activity of a quasi-psychical principle which, here and there> 
 interferes with an otherwise "mechanical" chain of processes. 
 It is in this place especially significant, however, that there 
 is no thought of regarding this habit of arcella as a separate 
 "character," independently acquired, or of attributing its 
 presence to the factors of organic evolution. The question 
 has become, why this animal does it to-day 1 and the previous 
 history of the species is evidently a matter impertinent to 
 the question. Further, the supposed psychical changes are 
 those of the whole individual, and we have here no really 
 abstract agent which manages the various parts of the body 
 independently of one another. And I believe that even 
 de Vries would not be so consistent as to associate this 
 habit of arcella^ as one " character " among others, with a 
 special material vehicle of its own. In a word, the theories 
 of the hypothetical biology break down when one comes to 
 apply them to the Protozoa, and the reason for this is suffi- 
 ciently obvious. It has to do withjhe mere fact that the 
 real changes which take place in them can be observed by 
 the microscope, and that the building of their structure may 
 be watched as it proceeds ; everything is seen to be related 
 within the individual, and to have its continual origin from 
 the rest. That is merely to say, that we cannot, in their 
 case, deny the fact of individuality, or resolve the animal 
 into a multitude of independent cells, or into a combination 
 of independent qualities ; we do not therefore have recourse 
 to the separate " vehicles of qualities," nor, in their turn, to 
 the " factors of organic evolution." It is so evident, in the 
 Protozoa, that everything which has an external significance 
 
136 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 has also, and first, an inner necessity and significance, that 
 it is impossible to proceed with the explanation of any 
 structure or change by means of its outer use alone, with- 
 out making the attempt, at every step, to bring inner origin 
 and outer use into one scheme. 
 
 Let us therefore review the chief characteristics of the 
 hypothetical agents which are almost universal in biological 
 theory. They are not known and have not been observed. 
 This is evident from the extraordinary diversity and number 
 of forms which they take, and from the fact that no one 
 of the theories which deal with them can be either proved 
 or refuted by means of an appeal to fact. They are a 
 scaffolding for the synthesis of abstract sciences. Morphology, 
 physiology, and embryology are studies which deal with 
 aspects of the organism. If they are regarded as each 
 containing truth which is complete in itself, and does not 
 require to be corrected and fulfilled by the results of the 
 other sciences, then we have facts of structure, facts of 
 function, and facts of ontogeny, which are separate facts, 
 existing side by side, and only connected with one another 
 through the anthropomorphic agent. How is structure 
 developed (since its functioning has nothing to do with 
 its rise) but by the agent ? How do the structures of the 
 body complete one another and form an orderly whole but 
 as the work of the agent ? It is open to us either to criticise 
 our abstractions, or to take them as answering to divisions 
 in nature and to unite the separated aspects by means of 
 the idioplasm or the immanent soul. 
 
 It is in virtue of that function that the agent is an alogical 
 principle, the instrument for hiding and denying reason. 
 There is no intelligible relation between those parts of the 
 body, and between those stages and aspects of the body, 
 and between those qualities which are externally held 
 together by the agent. It is that which does things arbi- 
 trarily, so that one cannot know the process, and so that 
 one cannot say what will be done next. It does what it 
 
THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLCGY. 137 
 
 does j that is all. It is the bridge by which theory passes, 
 in confusion, from the concrete to the abstract ; it is the 
 bridge from the individual to the species. Why has this 
 body such and such parts ? First, because the agent made 
 them, and then because the agent has gradually acquired, 
 in the course of many generations, it is easy to imagine 
 how such and such habits. Structure \sfor its function ; 
 but its function cannot make structure, except through these 
 hypothetical beings. In this way they are necessary to the 
 theories of organic evolution. Why does this arcella blow 
 its bubbles for hydrostatic purposes ? It is a habit gained 
 by natural selection ? No ; we do not care about the 
 abstract habit ; we can know nothing about that until we 
 understand this case. Similarly, how has this dog those 
 yellow spots above its eyes ? It is a mark gained by natural 
 selection, because it is an advantage to the dog to appear 
 awake when it is asleep? No; we do not care about 
 the abstract mark ; we must first understand this concrete 
 colouring. And for that you can offer us nothing but 
 the agent. 
 
 The hypothetical agent was further found to be unknow- 
 able. It was unqualified and purely self-determined ; there 
 was nothing by which we should know it. Being separate 
 from and among the parts over which it ruled, it was yet the 
 identity which was present in all the differences of the body, 
 and it was that which persisted unchanged through all the 
 phenomenal changes. Thus it was both a mere particular 
 among the other mere particulars, and yet was in itself the 
 unity of the organism ; and we found that it was these two 
 things separately and for different purposes, but could not 
 be both at once. It was the ground of the possibility of 
 latent qualities as well as of those which are, at the time in 
 question, in appearance ; indeed, it was the actual existence 
 of all possible things, as separate things. 
 
 In all these characteristics of the agent there is but one 
 endeavour on the part of the theorists; it is, to find an 
 
138 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 expression for the unity of the organism. For the whole 
 science is occupied simply with this matter of differences 
 united in an identity, and with the nature of the bond of 
 the members in a system. And the method which we have 
 now observed is perhaps the simplest possible one, and it 
 may be that some will consider that its two postulates are 
 defensible as a working hypothesis. But it seems to me 
 to be so riddled with contradictions as soon as it is taken 
 seriously, and to be in any case so formal and inefficient, 
 that we had better leave the whole problem alone than solve 
 it by the empty doctrine of the independence of organic 
 qualities and by the empty hypothesis of the anthropo- 
 morphic agent. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 11 EVERYTHING organic exists only by reason of, and is to be 
 explained only in relation to, some special external use 
 which it now has, or which a similar structure has had in 
 former times." This is the postulate for all the hypotheses 
 as to the origin of adaptation, and as to the transformation 
 of species. It not only thus underlies the greater part of 
 the speculative biology, but it is also the foundation for the 
 cruder forms of the doctrine of design. 
 
 Doubtless many consider this postulate to be a thing 
 unquestionable, having a certainty of its own, and being 
 necessarily the first principle for all biology. But its truth 
 is incomplete and one-sided. When it is read as the 
 biologists read it, it is as ridiculously inapt for science as 
 are the statements that grass exists for cows to feed upon, 
 or that the courses of the earth bring day and night in order 
 that we may have light for work and darkness for sleep ; in 
 fact, it is just the same sort of proposition as these. Now, 
 this third postulate of biology is the origin of those two 
 which we have already considered, and of all the confusion 
 which we have seen to arise from them. 
 
 Examples of its use are not necessary. We may 
 characterise it as the very centre of such a theory as 
 that of natural selection. For that theory, every part 
 and every mark has its special use, which renders it 
 necessary or at least advantageous, and thus, indirectly, 
 favours its rise in the race. Under the form of sexual 
 selection, again, every part or mark which can be brought 
 
 139 
 
140 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 under that form is found to have, and to exist only because 
 of, its special and external value of beauty or attractiveness. 
 And, in the scheme of Lamarck, we still find nothing else. 
 He looks on every organic feature as being there because it 
 was needed, and as indirectly taking its origin from that 
 very need ; and the particular feature is needed merely on 
 account of its specific function or single use. 
 
 Our postulate thus finds, or conjectures with various 
 degrees of probability, a "function" for every part and 
 for every mark which can, on any principle, be distinguished 
 from the rest of the creature ; and this function, whether 
 possible, supposed, or almost incredible, is held to be the 
 sole rationale for the mark or part in question. Such 
 features, on the other hand, as can be distinguished from 
 the rest, and yet do not lend themselves to a special 
 functional interpretation, are treated in one of three ways. 
 Either their function is regarded as not yet discovered ; or 
 they are regarded as of necessity involved in the structure 
 of other portions which do, in this respect, have functions ; 
 or, as we have already seen, they are interpreted as merely 
 "vestigial" representatives of formerly functional homo- 
 logues. 
 
 It may at once be noticed that, apart from other consider- 
 ations, we are here led into a distinction between different 
 kinds of organic features which is at once superficial and 
 false. Some parts have special significances, others are 
 necessary results of these, having no particular meanings 
 of their own, and others yet, having neither special signifi- 
 cances of their own, nor necessary interdependence with the 
 rest, are merely inherited. We do ill thus to distinguish 
 between three classes of parts or marks. Here are rather 
 three aspects of all the parts of the individual, which have 
 come to be regarded as the sole aspects, for science, of 
 three kinds of parts in the individual. But we have reason 
 for believing that everything in the individual may be inter- 
 preted in relation to a special function, that everything is 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 141 
 
 also the necessary result and support of the rest, and that 
 everything is also inherited. If then, we would do justice 
 to the principle under consideration, we must regard every- 
 thing organic as having its special use, and as existing only 
 because of it. 
 
 The close interconnection between this postulate and the 
 first and second hardly needs exhibiting. They all demand 
 one another. If parts of a system are not intelligible in 
 their inner relation to one another, then each must be main- 
 tained by an agent for a certain end. And if every quality 
 has its special use, and originated from that use, then the 
 chances are infinity to one that it did not also arise from and 
 with the other qualities in reciprocal relation. We are near 
 a very familiar question in this matter, but here is no place 
 for its discussion. Only, the explanation by external use 
 has often been held to be incompatible with that explana- 
 tion which works with the universal and careless mechanism 
 of nature. If that be the case, then our biology affords an 
 apt example of it. For you must deny, by the first postulate, 
 the validity and rights of the mechanical view of nature, be- 
 fore you can go on, in the third postulate, to affirm the un- 
 qualified pertinence of the teleological explanation. And 
 conversely, after the dogmatic assertion of the independence 
 of organic differences, one must go on to find a special and 
 unique use for every one of them. 
 
 Now, this third postulate is by no means confined to 
 biology. Its method and its peculiar defect may be ob- 
 served in more than one other science. It has no small in- 
 fluence, for instance, in psychology, where the derivation of 
 certain feelings or kinds of sensations is too often con- 
 sidered complete, when their utilities have been pointed out. 
 And usually those utilities are conjectural in the highest 
 degree. Fear, for instance, is there in order to carry the 
 organism out of danger, or to paralyse him so that he may be 
 taken for dead, and therefore uneatable, or that he may al- 
 together elude observation. And when the argument has 
 
142 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 moved so far, it is easily switched on to the theory of 
 organic evolution. Love is there, in order to add to our 
 numbers, or, more subtly, to give rise to new variations, or, 
 as others would have it, to eliminate and inhibit variation. 
 The utility may be anything out of several contraries ; we 
 rarely know what it exactly is, but we know that there is a 
 use, and are content to ascribe the origin and existence of 
 the habit or feeling to that use unknown. And in so many 
 cases is there certainly no biological utility in connection 
 with a feature of our life, that recourse must usually be had 
 to the " vestigial " form of explanation. Darwin's " Ex- 
 pression of the Emotions " has no other form. The scoffing 
 smile uncovers the teeth for action, not because they are to 
 be used immediately, but because it was formerly well to 
 have them ready. And in the more acute modern science, 
 we laugh in order to drive back blood to the head, which 
 has been rendered temporarily anaemic by the sense* of the 
 ridiculous. Lunatics who haunt corners and avoid open 
 spaces do so because their ancestors sneaked like cats from 
 shelter to shelter in continual terror of death. Or they do 
 so because those ancestors who did not hide were cut off 
 before they had children. More likely still, there were 
 positive advantages in the thickets, in that the berries and 
 roots grew there, and there the females were to be found. 
 Religion is unintelligible except in relation to its accidental 
 uses, and, in despite of its essential unreasonableness, is 
 there in order to the preservation of nations, which other- 
 wise would fall into decay through too much intelligence. 
 One begins to understand how it is that our modern quasi- 
 biology can flourish through psychology and other sciences 
 as soon as one grasps the simplicity and utter barrenness of 
 its method. Every quality has its unknown use, and be- 
 cause of the advantage which that use confers upon the 
 species, the quality has been established by the unknown 
 processes of organic evolution. The method is inapt, and 
 leads to nothing. 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 143 
 
 Proceeding upon this postulate, biology has to ask three 
 questions : What is the special use of each thing ? How 
 do the parts exist by reason of their significances ? And, 
 How does the organism come to fit its environment ? And 
 the necessary limitations of the answers are as follows. 
 
 In regard to the first question, each part has an infinity 
 of uses, all of which are, physiologically, as important to it 
 as its special use, and very often much more so. In the 
 consideration, therefore, of the origin of the part in the in- 
 dividual, and also of its origin in the race (in so far as the 
 latter is considered to be the product of use-inheritance), 
 the special use of the part may be of a minimal importance. 
 Horns do not grow by butting, nor do anthers grow by 
 fertilising, either in the individual or in the race. And in- 
 numerable other such instances might be adduced. The 
 special use of a structure is thus defined by omitting the 
 greater part, and often the most important part, of its living 
 relationships. I say most important, because we have to do 
 with origins, and the special use of the part has not neces- 
 sarily to do with origin. 1 
 
 Now the special use is abstract, not merely because it is 
 only one out of many, but also because it is often, from its 
 external nature, more or less hopelessly conjectural. One 
 cannot on that account say that there is not a use, for it 
 must have an effect on the whole life, and that effect, what- 
 ever it is, can be looked upon as a use ; but this peculiar 
 nature of uses may render them inconvenient for science. 
 What the effect is, is in many cases quite out of our know- 
 ledge. It might, often enough, be calculated if we knew a 
 great deal about the manifold conditions of life. Even 
 
 1 Still, even in the most unlikely cases, we may well be wrong on 
 this point. Joints are for flexion, and false joints, in a fracture, are 
 made by flexion. In view of that fact, can we go on to deny that 
 normal joints are made by those appropriate bending movements 
 for which they are made ? Roux' work is full of interest in this 
 direction. 
 
144 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 then the research would remain a mere calculation, abstract 
 and statistical. No more concrete approach could be made 
 to it, so accidental is it. When we pass through such 
 degrees of probability as the following, we see that any method 
 of explanation which deals chiefly with the external uses of 
 structures and marks, bases itself upon very uncertain data. 
 The giraffe has a long neck to reach the leaves of trees, or, 
 in drinking, to make up for the height of its shoulder. 
 The electric organ of the skate is there in order to have 
 some unknown effect upon its prey, which, however, it is 
 not powerful enough to stun. Rabbits have white tails, that 
 they may see one another in the twilight, or that foxes may 
 better see them (one of these statements is just as sound as 
 the other, and our decision between them could only be based 
 upon some kind of statistical enquiry). Porcupines rattle 
 their quills in order to warn their enemies as to what they 
 are, and to make known that they are furnished with 
 dangerous spines, so that they may not be attacked. In 
 such cases and you will find many even more doubtful in 
 the works of the biologists the use or external result for the 
 life of the creature is practically outside of science, for this 
 reason, if for no other, that chance enters so largely, and that 
 our knowledge can enter so little, into its determination. 
 
 Some people are ever asking, * Why do you do this and 
 that ? ' They quite sincerely suppose that every action has 
 its particular external use. Only in reference to that utility, 
 and to the supposed isolated motive which springs from it, 
 are they able to understand any action at all. To them 
 your life must present the puzzling appearance of a set of 
 disjointed actions, each of which only exists by reason of 
 some end which is to be gained by it ; and if the thing has 
 no obvious motive at the beginning, or gains no distinct 
 prize at the end, then it is a suspicious riddle. Now, 
 these people are like the biologists. They deny the unity 
 of character, and trace the teleological pattern of your life 
 to an explicit conscious scheme for it, following the 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 145 
 
 old path of the mere difference and the anthropomorphic 
 agent, for man also can be studied, and wrongly studied, 
 anthropomorphically. Giving a fictitious value to the 
 results and to the uses of your action (which things are 
 utterly accidental, and cannot be foreseen), they are ever 
 labouring a hypothesis which should show some " reason," 
 however remote and subtle, for what occurs. Your feeling, 
 in giving reasons for your conduct, that you are deceiving, 
 although unavoidably, is due to the abstractness of your 
 answer, made necessary by the form of the question ; you 
 are giving a hypothesis, made at the moment, under special 
 disadvantages, and though you have no means of knowing 
 that there is any considerable correctness in your hypothesis, 
 you know that it will be taken as having a value which it 
 cannot have. The origins of the action are obscure and 
 infinite, its results are infinite and incalculable, yet you are 
 forced to patch up some kind of estimate of the latter, and 
 to put it forward as the rationale of what has occurred. So 
 impossible is the answer to the question, What is the special 
 use of each thing ? even in that sphere of human action of 
 which we may be supposed to have more knowledge than 
 we have of the animals and plants. 
 
 Who, for instance, would pretend to know the total 
 results, however generally, of the special habit which Dr. 
 Stirling thus discusses ? 
 
 " Porcupines, we are told, rattle their quills and vibrate 
 their tails when angered. These rattling quills, it appears, 
 are only on the tail. Short, hollow, thin, open, sup- 
 ported on a slender footstalk each, they strike against 
 each other and rattle when the tail is shaken. Mr. Darwin 
 says further here : ' We can, I think, understand why 
 porcupines have been provided with this special sound- 
 producing instrument ; they are nocturnal animals, and if 
 they scented or heard a prowling beast of prey, it would ba 
 a great advantage to them in the dark to give warning to 
 their enemy what they were, and that they were furnished 
 
 K 
 
146 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 with dangerous spines ; they would thus escape being 
 attacked.' It is curious how Mr. Darwin must always 
 reason through the conjectural stories which he imagina- 
 tively gives himself to tell. But may we not also, equally 
 imaginatively, conjecture some very different issue, or even 
 a score of such ? Even, as Mr. Darwin tells the story, it 
 would be the 'enemy,' the 'beast of prey,' that would be 
 advantaged as warned not to make an attack where it 
 would certainly only be injured. But to take it reverse- 
 wise it is, Mr Darwin tells us, an ' enemy ' that is 
 concerned. Well, what enemy that knew by its rattle where 
 its prey was, and could come upon it by surprise and in 
 the dark, would magnanimously consent to spare it till 
 daylight, when it itself (the enemy) would necessarily have 
 all against it which it had then and there for it ? Really, 
 when would Mr. Darwin wish us to suppose that this 
 particular enemy seeks this particular prey ? For, of course, 
 the porcupine is like the rest, wholly in the drift of the 
 struggle for life. We have to bear in mind, too, that, while 
 the porcupine is in itself a very harmless, vegetable-feeding 
 animal, it is only at night that its enemy is likely to fall in 
 with it, for it is hidden asleep in its impregnably defended 
 fortress during the day. The rattle ' a great advantage in 
 the dark ' ! Why, but for the rattle, would it not be most 
 likely to altogether escape its ' enemy ' in the dark ? And 
 yet to Mr. Darwin it is precisely for this ( great advantage 
 to them in the dark ' that ' porcupines have been provided, 
 through the modification of their protective spines, with 
 this special sound -producing instrument,' an advantage 
 which, as it turns out, can stead it in the second place only 
 by steading its enemy infinitely more in the first place." 1 
 
 All the results of anything organic are its uses. That we 
 
 do not exhaustively know these uses does not invalidate 
 
 them for the basis of our explanation of their origin or of 
 
 their maintenance ; but they do become useless for science 
 
 1 Dr. Stirling, " Darwinism Natural Selection." 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 147 
 
 by reason of the impossibility of knowing them at all in the 
 greater number of cases, because of their accidental nature. 
 
 The second question "How do parts exist by reason 
 of their significance ? " is answered either by the theories 
 of an immanent quasi-psychical principle in the individual, 
 or by the theories of organic evolution. The objection to 
 the first is that it is incapable of being filled by research, 
 because it implies the hypothetical agent which we have 
 already studied. And the theories of organic evolution 
 have very much the same significance. They received their 
 origin from a determined attempt to eliminate what is 
 known as design^ from nature, and their curious mechanism 
 is to be referred entirely to that endeavour. 
 
 They consist of various schemes by which the purpose- 
 ful event may appear to be the result, purposefulness and 
 all, of a tumble of circumstances which are not concretely 
 intelligible in relation to it. Or, as the theorists themselves 
 would put it, they strive to show the rise of the adapted 
 from " merely mechanical processes." " The old argument 
 from design in nature fails, now that the law of natural 
 selection has been discovered. There seems to be no 
 more design in the variability of organic beings than in 
 the course which the wind blows." These words of Darwin 
 roughly indicate the impulse, and the secret of the attractive- 
 ness, of these theories. It must be remembered that the 
 latter usually oppose themselves to an exceedingly crude 
 and elementary conception of design, and rightly refuse to 
 give much importance to a doctrine of the formation of all 
 organic forms by a mere unknowable agent. For in such 
 a doctrine we have no more than the old quasi-psychological 
 form for an ideal unity. 
 
 Parts, therefore, though existing by reason of their 
 significance, do not exist because of someone's perception 
 of their significance. Now our theories, in their abstraction 
 from the physiological reciprocity of parts both in the rise and 
 maintenance of the individual, indicate that the alternative 
 
H 8 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 views of the parts, as existing because of their significance, and 
 as existing because of their conditions, respectively exclude 
 one another. They therefore attempt a scheme by which 
 these two aspects of phenomena may be historically sepa- 
 rated from one another. Conditions, we are told, do not 
 directly affect parts, but the latter are suited to conditions 
 by an indirect process of progressive adaptation in organic 
 evolution. In such an argument we must remember that 
 the concrete and particular parts and conditions which 
 exist in this organic relation on which I place my ringer 
 are not introduced at all. "The heart and the peri- 
 cardium " are by no means the same as this heart and this 
 pericardium, and though you may invent what origin you 
 like for the relation between the former abstractions, you 
 are not at all touching the concrete problem. But parts 
 are immediately freed from their conditions, in their rise 
 and maintenance, by the insertion of the idioplasm or of 
 some other such principle, or by the formal allowing for it. 
 And the secular modification of parts by conditions is, on 
 its side, only possible through such an agent. 
 
 Now, this logical feat on the part of the theories of 
 adaptation by organic evolution is the beginning and end 
 of their existence. If it were not for their metaphysical 
 task and trick, they would not continue to exist for a day. 
 For one may see how utterly without content they are 
 by considering the ordinary biological controversies, in 
 which the most opposite conclusions may be both im- 
 pregnably and ineffectually held. And what, in this way, 
 they can do for organisms, that they can also naturally do 
 for not a few other systems in which the cause and the end 
 seem to be strangers to one another. 
 
 It is the merest affectation to deny that their uses for the 
 life of the individual must in some way enter into our 
 explanations of the rise of parts both in the individual and 
 in the race. Eyes are made for seeing, and are maintained 
 by seeing, and joints are made for and are maintained by 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 149 
 
 flexion. And in just this way everything organic appears to 
 be adapted, as soon as you can find the point to which it 
 should be referred. The problem of biology is to bring this 
 made for and that made by into some intelligible union. 
 But the Darwinian doctrines do not effect such an end. For 
 their form, and that of all which have sprung from them, 
 are as follows. In the individual, the part is intelligibly 
 made for its function, but is unintelligibly made by the agent. 
 In the race, on the other hand, we are to know that the part 
 is selected or is used by its function, but is not made for any- 
 thing at all (for here, at the great distance of " fortuitous " 
 variation, mechanical process is allowed to come in). In 
 other words, we have here an arrangement ingeniously 
 planned, by which we may pass without a jolt from the 
 category of ends to the category of cause a mere 
 mechanism for a formal translation. By it we are enabled 
 to give a formal account of the origin of parts, under the 
 conceptions and categories of physics, while we really and 
 in practice treat of their origin as determined by the 
 prescience of their ends. Ask our present question again, 
 and you will see that it is the problem of the greater part of 
 the hypothetical biology; it alone impelled Lamarck and 
 Darwin, and impels Weismann and his critics. And you 
 will see that there are two ways of bringing together the 
 existence and the significance which form its terms ; first, 
 by introducing a whole world of hypothetical agents and 
 processes between the terms; and second, by the study of 
 the relation of these two aspects of everything organic, based 
 on the recognition that the significance and the existence 
 go ever hand in hand. In either case we have to do with 
 a logic, and the only difference is that in the former case we 
 have unverifiable hypotheses, but in the latter case we have 
 a study of the methods of research. Everything organic 
 certainly exists, as our postulate would have it, by reason of 
 its special significance to the individual. But it does not, 
 in fact do so through all the Darwinian or other apparatus, 
 
150 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 but in some way even here and now, because it is organic 
 to an individual. 
 
 The third question is only a form of the second, but it is 
 perhaps the most common form for biological speculation. 
 In attempting an answer to it, we are to remember that 
 organisms are, in a sense, not adapted to their environments. 
 That is true in so far as the word " environment " denotes 
 facts and conditions which are not their facts and con- 
 ditions. It is true, inasmuch as we can easily think of a 
 thousand improvements by which they would attain special 
 advantages, but which they have not. But a creature's 
 environment cannot be studied apart from the study of its 
 structure and its habits. If we do so, we are describing 
 something to which the organism is plainly not related, and 
 to which it is consequently not adapted. But when we 
 mean, by "environment," the known relations of the 
 organism, then the latter is wholly adapted to the former. 
 If a structure appears to fail of its end, we are to learn, not 
 that adaptation is as yet incomplete, or that it has fallen off 
 from perfection, but that we have not yet taken hold upon 
 the true use of the structure. This statement is incomplete, 
 but it is not incomplete as regards the doctrines of organic 
 evolution. For the environment is just as much a part of 
 the creature as are its morphological proportions, and in the 
 study of adaptation we have no right method of distinguish- 
 ing between the relations of organs within a body, and the 
 relations of parts of the body to what is called " without," 
 as between two different kinds of relations. Are we to 
 speak of the weight of the organism, or of its environment of 
 gravitation ? Is an animal slow, or is its enemy swift ? At 
 what point, or on what principle, does the oxygen and the 
 moisture of the air cease to be mine and become that of the 
 environment ? Or, in speaking of the skin, can we find any 
 essential difference between the kind of its relations to that 
 which is beneath it, and the kind of its relations to what is 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE QF BIOLOGY. 151 
 
 above ? Is not the whole body environment, and the whole 
 of its conditions body? 
 
 In this matter we come to the old difficulty, that biology 
 is drawing hard divisions where research knows of none. For 
 it is obvious that we cannot speak of a relation where we 
 have not two sides which already act upon one another. 
 Research knows nothing of one outer side, to which there 
 might be an adaptation, if the inner side will only some day 
 change. The relation, in short, is either there or it is not 
 there, and if the latter, then it is- nothing at all. But 
 biology gives us an outer to which the inner is not yet, but 
 will some day be, adapted. In so far as the outer acts upon 
 the inner, it is one with it. And in so far as it does not 
 act upon it, it is nothing relevant to the matter. A man, 
 for instance, undertakes severe exertions, and his heart is 
 hypertrophied. He is living, let us say, in a hilly country, 
 or is occupied as a hunter. The environment, in this case, 
 is the hills, and the adaptation is the strengthening of the 
 heart. Now, in such a case we have an intelligible relation, 
 which can be worked out in every step, between first and 
 last. But let him live on the plains, and never go up the 
 hills, and the latter, however high, will make no difference 
 to his heart. The environment, in fact, is not his, except 
 in virtue of its being physiologically a part of his life. The 
 reaction, in this simple case, but also, we must believe, in 
 all cases, is a reaction which, both in its manner and in its 
 limits, can be followed in detail. 
 
 When, however, we come to organic evolution, we find 
 that there is either no reaction, but a mere happening 
 together, such as we have in the theory of the selection of 
 fortuitous variations, or there is a reaction which is con- 
 fessedly unintelligible, such as we have in the theory of use 
 inheritance. And in both cases we, therefore, reach the 
 possibility of explaining the becoming adapted of the organ- 
 ism to an environment which is not its environment. The 
 species becomes fitted to conditions which do not immedi- 
 
152 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ately condition it, by steps which are undiscoverable, and 
 which do not admit of being even guessed in their detail. 
 It follows that adaptive changes become a set of changes 
 which are of their own kind, and stand apart from the 
 changes of intelligible reaction, the latter sometimes ac- 
 cidentally taking their place among the former, but never 
 doing so otherwise than accidentally. 
 
 It is not necessary to examine the factors which have 
 been brought forward to supplement the action of the two 
 great principles which divide the theory of Lamarck from 
 that of Darwin, Nor is it relevant to the question, to ad- 
 duce observations from organic life. For all theories in 
 this kind abstract from the processes of ontogeny, and this 
 abstraction appears to me to be quite fatal to their claims. 
 Throughout their whole extent, we are to remember, they 
 are not dealing with anything which happens or which can 
 be observed. It is for the reader to judge what disadvan- 
 tages such a method confers upon theory. 
 
 LAMARCK. 
 
 There are reasons why Lamarck's system should be of 
 special interest to the student of biology. For it contains 
 the first theory of adaptation through the transformation of 
 species, which is founded upon bare hypothesis, and it may 
 in this respect be regarded as the pattern for all modern 
 biology. It also gives its name to that school which some- 
 what vaguely opposes itself to the explanation of everything 
 organic as the product of natural selection and fortuitous 
 variation. And thirdly, the hypothetical processes and sub- 
 stances of this system have now become, in the ordinary 
 course of research, obvious fictions ; so that the doctrine re- 
 veals at once its true relation to observation, even without 
 the demonstration of the impossibility and self-contradic- 
 tion of its typical hypotheses. For Lamarck continually 
 boasts of the sure method of observation, and fills his 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 153 
 
 pages with innumerable references to organic phenomena ; 
 but the advance of research has shown that he, like the 
 other biologists of hypotheses, was deceiving himself on this 
 score. For, whatever had been the actual qualities of 
 organisms, they would have supported his theory equally 
 well, so long as they were qualities of organisms. 
 
 But even apart from the light which the study of 
 Lamarck throws upon biological problems and methods in 
 general, the system itself is of great interest. It is certain 
 that this biologist has been, on the whole, misinterpreted, 
 but, on the other hand, it is not easy to be sure that one 
 understands him. And the confusion has taken place 
 chiefly over that key-word of his system, besoin, or need 
 This word has frequently been rendered "desire," and 
 Lamarck has often more than a trace of this meaning in 
 his use of it. But, on reading the whole development of 
 his argument, one immediately finds that neither interpreta- 
 tion may be used exclusively, and that, in fact, besom is a 
 conception which, for the purposes of the theory, must re- 
 main undeveloped and undefined. Use the conception of 
 need alone, and the theory is inadequate ; restrict yourself 
 to the conception of desire, and the whole theory becomes 
 ridiculous, as flippant controversialists have not been slow 
 to find. It is certainly more than need, and as certainly, it 
 is less than desire. It probably appeared to Lamarck to 
 have a quite definite meaning, requiring no further analysis. 
 One can only suppose that he was unconscious of his easy 
 bridge from the ideal relation of necessity to the psycho- 
 logical fact of desire from the logical form to the pheno- 
 menal process. 
 
 In the need, or besoin, we have not, of course, to do with 
 a mere negation. It is not a mere being without or not 
 having. The organism has some kind of reference to the 
 thing which is needed. And, since every part of an organism 
 is needed by the rest and by circumstances, it is not difficult 
 to find, in this need, a general principle for the origin of all 
 
^54 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 organic characteristics. All characteristics are alike in this 
 point, though in no other ; for simply as parts of organisms, 
 they have relations of necessity with one another. But a 
 mechanism, by which this form of necessity may create 
 the particulars, is wanting to observation. Yet such a 
 mechanism becomes desirable, in order that the emptiness 
 of the theory may be, if only apparently, filled up. The 
 logical distinction must therefore, as we are well accustomed 
 to find, become a quasi-phenomenal difference ; and thus 
 there arises the Lamarckian desire, which is more like Hart- 
 mann's Unconscious than it is like anything else, being 
 quite as metaphysical in its origin as is the latter. I shall 
 not attempt the difficult historical question as to what 
 Lamarck supposed his conception of need to include. For 
 our present purpose I merely take his work as it stands, 
 and study it in relation to the problem of adaptation, and 
 watch its development of the old quasi-psychical principle. 
 And I here set down certain important passages from the 
 " Philosophic Zoologique," chapter vii. 
 
 " It is evident that the observed form of animals is the 
 product, on the one hand, of the ever-increasing complexity 
 of organisation, which tends to form a regular gradation ; 
 and, on the other hand, of the influences of a multitude 
 of very various circumstances, which tend continually to 
 destroy the regularity of that gradation of the increasing 
 complexity of organisation. But I must explain my mean- 
 ing in these expressions. ' Circumstances affect the form 
 and the organisation of animals' means that the former, 
 in becoming very different, change, in course of time, even 
 the form and organisation by proportionate modifications. 
 Certainly it would be a mistake to use these words literally, 
 for, whatever be the circumstances, they have no directly 
 modifying effect whatever on form and organisation. But 
 great changes in circumstances give rise to great changes 
 in the needs of animals, and such changes in their needs 
 necessarily give rise to changes in their actions. And if the 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 155 
 
 new needs become constant or very lasting, the animals 
 take on new habits which are as lasting as the needs which 
 gave rise to them. It is easy to demonstrate this; indeed, it 
 is obvious without explanation. So that it is evident that a 
 great change in circumstances, when it has become constant 
 for a race of animals, leads those animals into new habits. 
 And, if the new circumstances which have become 
 permanent for a race of animals have given rise to new 
 habits in them (that is, have impelled them to new actions 
 which have become habitual), the result will be the use of 
 such a part in preference to that of such another, and in 
 certain cases the total disuse of such a part as has become 
 useless. Now, none of this is hypothesis or my own 
 opinion ; it is, on the contrary, truth which only needs 
 attention and observation of facts to become evident.'' 
 (P. 222.) 
 
 Such, then, is the process of adaptation, to some extent 
 in the individual, and altogether in the race. And the 
 process is the same in each case. Moreover, the 
 same process might be thought to underlie the adapta- 
 tion of part to part within the development of the individual. 
 A race of animals comes into certain circumstances, or is in 
 them (for the change is not essential to the argument), and 
 suffers no direct change from these circumstances. The 
 latter, however, affect the needs, and the needs condition 
 the actions, which, as habits, affect the form and organisa- 
 tion. Just so in the theory of natural selection, the 
 circumstances do not directly affect the race, but all 
 adaptation is referred to the indirect affection of form 
 by the environment. This indirectness of the relation of 
 the individual to circumstance is the form which is first 
 attained by all theories of adaptation, and the special 
 manner of it is a secondary point. 
 
 The meaning of this indirectness is, that no particular of 
 the organism is changed, except through the unity of the 
 organism, and that changes in organisms have the appear- 
 
156 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 ance of being purposeful responses to, rather than mere 
 results of, the changes in the circumstances. And the 
 theories which we are studying have no other object than 
 to derive the present purposeful reaction from a series of 
 direct causes which operated long ago. But it must be 
 noticed that this element of theory, which is as strongly held 
 by Weismann as by Lamarck, completely does away with 
 all those analogies for organic adaptation which are drawn 
 from inorganic things. You may see the coat of rust 
 round a ball of iron, or the shore round a bay, given as 
 parallels to the adaptation of one part of the organism to 
 another, or of the whole to its environment. In such cases 
 the relation is perfectly direct, and the change in one 
 element involves a calculable complementary change in 
 the other. But it would appear as though such a direct 
 action of circumstances on organic form takes place, if at 
 all, only within the narrowest limits, either in the individual 
 or in the race. We have seen that the nutritive conditions 
 of form are not answered in the individual by results such 
 as one would expect from the conditions, or such as one 
 could give in parallel degrees with the conditions. The 
 determination of sex, for instance, is hardly the direct 
 result of the food supply, in the same sense as the shape of 
 the bay is the direct result of the shape of its shore, and 
 the difference does not seem to be merely that of the extent 
 of our knowledge. Let a race of birds take to the water, 
 and, provided that such changes do, in truth, occur, its toes 
 become webbed and it secretes oil for its feathers. But 
 these changes are hardly the direct result of cold and wet. 
 In the great majority of cases, one can see the advantage of 
 a structure, and when its advantage is not evident, it is 
 looked for as probably discoverable. But either one cannot 
 speak of an immediate cause at all, or one cannot relate 
 that cause to the advantage. This is notably the case in 
 the study of ontogeny. The events which produce muscle 
 have apparently nothing to do with contraction; bone is not, 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 157 
 
 apparently, produced by stress, nor, so far as one can see, 
 does nerve arise in the individual by feeling. Still, this 
 may be only apparently so. Of course embryonic parts 
 have functions, and it is probable that these are not 
 incomparable to their adult functions. But, in fact, we are 
 accustomed to consider rather the end than the cause of 
 the organic part ; and when we attempt to find the end as 
 cause, it is plain that the end must operate indirectly, for 
 there are other immediate causes which can be found by 
 research. Hence there arises the necessity of making 
 adaptation indirect, and Lamarck, as we have seen, is plain 
 on this point. What qualities the organism has, it has 
 because it needs them and because they are purposive ; for 
 the form is not immediately referable to the circumstances 
 in which it finds itself. That is the beginning and end of 
 the theory, and the rest is only the very vague and 
 hesitating attempt to show how the need can bring about 
 the new structure. That this is Lamarck's central thought 
 appears from his summary of the theory, which includes his 
 two well-known laws. He says, " In order to see the true 
 order of things one must recognise : 
 
 "(i) That every change which is at all considerable and 
 continuously maintained in the circumstances of each race 
 of animals, affects in it a real change in their needs. 
 
 " (2) That every change in the needs of animals necessi- 
 tates other actions on their part for the satisfaction of the 
 new needs, and, in consequence, other habits. 
 
 " (3) That since every new need requires new actions to 
 satisfy it, it demands of the animal which experiences it 
 either the more frequent use of such a part as was formerly 
 less used, so that it becomes considerably developed and 
 enlarged ; or the use of new parts which insensibly arise in 
 the organism from the needs, by the efforts of its inner feel- 
 ing, as I shall presently show from known facts. And so, 
 to arrive at the true cause of so many different forms and 
 so many various habits as are given in the animal world, 
 
158 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 one must recognise that the infinitely diversified but slowly 
 changing circumstances in which the animals of each race 
 have successively been placed, have brought about in each 
 race new needs, and, consequently, changes in their habits. 
 As soon as one has recognised this incontestable truth, it 
 will be easy to perceive how the new needs can have been 
 satisfied and the new habits taken on, if one attends to these 
 two laws of nature, which have always been corroborated by 
 observation. 
 
 " FIRST LAW. In every animal which has not passed the 
 limits of its development, the more frequent and sustained 
 use of any organ gradually strengthens that organ, develops 
 it, increases its size, and gives it a strength proportional to 
 the use in question ; while the constant disuse of such an 
 organ insensibly weakens and deteriorates it, progressively 
 diminishes its faculties, and finally results in its disappear- 
 ance. 
 
 "SECOND LAW. All that nature has caused to be acquired 
 by or lost to individuals through the influence of the cir- 
 cumstances to which their race has long been exposed and 
 therefore through the predominant use of an organ, or 
 through the constant disuse of a part she preserves, by re- 
 production, for the new individuals which come from them, 
 provided that the acquired changes are common to the two 
 sexes, or to those which have produced the new in- 
 dividuals." (Vol. i., p. 234.) 
 
 So far, except for the allusion to the "sentiment in- 
 terieur? the conception of need is simply that of necessity, 
 and we have no psychological hypothesis. But the prin- 
 ciple later develop into desire in such instances as the 
 following : 
 
 " The bird, which is attracted into the water by need, 
 in order that it may find the food by which it lives, spreads 
 out its toes when it would strike the water and move over 
 the surface. The skin which unites the base of the toes 
 gains the habit of stretching, because of this ceaselessly re- 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 159 
 
 peated spreading of the toes. Thus, in course of time, the 
 wide membranes which unite the toes of ducks and geese 
 are found as we see them. The same efforts to swim have 
 spread out even the membranes between the toes of frogs, 
 turtles, otters, and beavers. The bird, on the other hand, 
 which is accustomed by its manner of life to sit upon trees, 
 and which comes of individuals which had all contracted 
 this habit, has toes which are necessarily longer than, and 
 differently formed from those of the aquatic animals above 
 mentioned. Its nails have become lengthened in course of 
 time ; they are sharpened and bent into hooks in order to 
 clutch the branches upon which the animal so often rests. 
 Even so one feels that the bird of the shore which does not 
 care to swim and which nevertheless needs to approach the 
 edge of the water to find its prey, is continually in danger of 
 sinking into the mud. That bird, therefore, trying to avoid 
 plunging its body into the water, makes every effort to 
 stretch and to lengthen its feet. The result is that the long 
 continued habit of stretching and lengthening its feet which 
 is contracted by that bird and by all of its race, raises the 
 individuals of the race, as it were, upon stilts, inasmuch as 
 they gradually gain long and naked feet. . . . Should an 
 animal make repeated efforts to lengthen its tongue, in order 
 to satisfy its needs, the tongue will acquire considerable 
 length ; should it need to seize anything with that organ, 
 the latter will divide and become forked. . . . Needs, al- 
 ways caused by circumstances, and the consequent sustained 
 efforts to satisfy them, can do more than to modify organs, 
 for they can even displace those organs when some of the 
 needs make this necessary." (Vol. i., p. 248.) 
 
 Now, all this doubtless appears very ridiculous, and, 
 though it is as good as any theory of transformation, so it is. 
 But it reveals one thing, a haunting sense on the part of 
 Lamarck that he must bring in the conception of need at 
 every point. These are no facts which he is relating to us, 
 they are a set of the most various and confused fancies as to 
 
160 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 how need can bring about the adaptations of organic life. 
 Of the fact that need effects all this, he is well assured, but 
 his knowledge goes no further. And he finds it extra- 
 ordinarily difficult to imagine how the indispensable prin- 
 ciple of his theory actually does its work. Sometimes that 
 which is needed is represented as actually thought of by the 
 animal, sometimes as merely present to its " inner feeling," 
 and sometimes as belonging to the animal only in one re- 
 spect in that it would be well for the animal to have it, 
 though it has it not. Sometimes the creature needs the 
 particular structure because of other habits or structures 
 which it has already, and which could not exist in fact with- 
 out that which is represented here as derived from their 
 need of it. In a word, the main principle of a biological 
 system could not well be more formal and all-inclusive, or, 
 in its working out, more indefinite. 
 
 But what is it to need ? Often it is at once to have and 
 not to have, as a creditor is without his money. Of an ill- 
 composed picture you say that it needs a certain colour here 
 or there, in order to complete its scheme, but not because 
 it merely has not that colour. A parasite needs a host, but 
 the host, although without any, does not need a parasite. 
 Every part of my body needs the other parts. Each stage 
 in ontogeny needs the coming stages, because they belong to 
 its whole. On the other hand, I do not need four arms, 
 although to have them would confer on me certain advan- 
 tages. A politician needs his seat in Parliament, because 
 he is already a politician. Sex needs its mate because they 
 are two parts of a whole. Latent qualities are needed until 
 they appear, and when they have appeared they are no less 
 needed ; and in both cases they are needed because they 
 are already within the ideal unity of the organism. A cart 
 needs its wheel whether the wheel is there or no, because 
 the wheel belongs to the completeness of the structure, and 
 fulfils the uses of the cart. In a word, A needs B because 
 B is implied in the rest of the whole, that is in A, and be- 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. l6l 
 
 cause A and B are included together in our scheme. It 
 makes no difference whether A is, to our eyes, in complete 
 possession of B, or is completely without it. 
 
 And if an individual is without a certain quality which 
 will yet appear at a later stage, it needs that quality in order 
 to its completeness, but it does not need it more now, when 
 it has it not, than later, when it is presently qualified by it. 
 Need, therefore, is not a matter of time at all. An organism 
 needs all its qualities and parts equally ; and to say that it 
 needs them at such and such times, or in such and such 
 places, that is, in their proper relations and successions, is 
 merely to say that they are such and such periods or parts ; 
 the need is the mere expression for the unity of the organism. 
 It is even evident that this or that may be necessary to an 
 organism but may never appear in it at all. An animal can- 
 not be both male and female, and a foliage leaf cannot at the 
 same time be a petal, for these forms exclude one another. 
 But both sets of qualities are in each case necessary to the 
 completion of the scheme. That is, qualities which need 
 one another may be separated from one another in different 
 organisms, or in different parts of the same organism, or in 
 the individual and its environment, without in any way 
 affecting the conception of need as applied to them. 
 
 The thing needed is possible to, and is implied in, the 
 qualities of the thing which needs, and there is no question 
 of its being present or absent in temporal fact, or as repre- 
 sented by a desire. In other words, need is the attitude 
 towards one another of the parts of a real system, as soon as 
 they are distinguished from one another, whether the dis- 
 tinction is made in terms of space, or of time, or in any 
 other manner. It is the union of two differences in an 
 underlying identity of scheme and of end, and it is only be- 
 cause of that reference to a common unity that need is more 
 than a mere having or not having. Now, that unity of 
 system is an ideal unity, and the relation of necessity is an 
 ideal relation. Necessity, as the form of the reference of 
 
 L 
 
1 62 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 qualities to one another, within an individual, has primarily 
 no psychological reference. It does not necessarily exist as 
 a conception of the thing needed within that which needs. 
 Organic needs may, indeed, affect the state of feeling, and 
 much of pain is due to the sundering of organic relations, 
 and much of pleasure to their satisfaction. But the whole 
 question of feeling is apart from the present subject, because 
 feeling is not essential to need, as the latter conception is 
 used in the theory under discussion. Not all needs associ- 
 ate themselves with a definite state of feeling, and an 
 embryo is not in misery because it is not adult. Lamarck's 
 animal needed a forked tongue, but whatever change the 
 growing forked of the tongue might make in the emotional 
 tone, it would hardly change it merely in the direction of 
 pleasure. Use only hypertrophies and coordinates, but for 
 this tongue we need some other principle than use. Un- 
 doubtedly, the " inner feeling " would come in here. Even 
 if the being without what one needs leads to a sense of 
 uneasiness, it does not thereby give rise to a conception of 
 what is wanting. One may be sensible of discomfort, and 
 yet not know what one wants ; for all craving is easily mis- 
 interpreted, and may be attached to almost any object by 
 suggestion. And science is silent as to the determination 
 of even action by feelings without conceptions, and how 
 much more as to the determination of growth by that 
 means. But in any case, Lamarck's need does not always 
 include desire ; it is the mere form of organic relations. 
 
 Yet, when that form becomes a special principle among 
 others, in the modification and transformation of species, 
 this inevitable result occurs. Need ceases to be the 
 universal form, in order to become a part of the content 
 among other parts. Instead of being an expression for the 
 unity of the organism, it gradually becomes one difference 
 among the others, and we return to a familiar point in the 
 anatomy of hypothesis. As such a difference, it can hardly 
 be represented otherwise than as a psychical difference. 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 163 
 
 Need thus becomes phenomenally operative as a conception 
 of the thing needed, for, as an ideal relation, it cannot be 
 quasi-phenomenally represented otherwise than as a state of 
 a consciousness. The error is that old one of attempting to 
 give it a place as a part at all. While, therefore, Lamarck 
 is content to merely indicate that what is there is there as 
 something needed, necessary, and that it subserves ends, 
 and enters into an ideal system, he is not carrying his 
 general metaphysic of life beyond its rightful place. But 
 when he attempts to render this justifiable conception of 
 organic relations into the terms of a quasi-physiological 
 account of the origin of the related differences in time, he is 
 merely giving us a picture-logic, which must remain for 
 ever empty and formal, and which cannot, as an account of 
 events which are supposed to have taken place, be either 
 refuted or proved. The transformation of species, with him 
 as with the others, is merely a procession of events which 
 cannot be observed, in which the unity of the organism is 
 incarnate as one difference among others, Compelling those 
 others into the form of organic relations. 
 
 A certain set of circumstances necessitate certain objects 
 for which they are the special circumstances, and that 
 necessity brings about the existence of those objects, in 
 such and such a manner. That is the whole theory, and 
 the special manner is, in every case, the object for the most 
 abstract conjecture. Now, it does not seem idle to point 
 out, as against this formula of explanation, that the circum- 
 stances are only such in relation to the objects for which they 
 are circumstances. In short, the adapted organ is there as 
 soon as the circumstances which necessitate it are there. The 
 latter are only special " points " of the environment in rela- 
 tion to those organic parts by reference to which they are 
 distinguished and understood. That to which it is already 
 adapted and nothing else is a creature's environment. 
 Animals do not first support themselves in the air, and then 
 gain organs for doing so, and if a bird swims on the water, 
 
1 64 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 it is already fitted so to swim in its own manner. The 
 organ is not needed by the species unless it is there in the 
 species, and there to make the circumstances to which it is 
 adapted. But to conceive of organisms as being thrown 
 into circumstances which are not their circumstances, and 
 as, consequently, standing in need of some qualification 
 which is not theirs already, is merely to play with abstrac- 
 tions. There are not, in nature, such abstract organisms or 
 such abstract environments. The matter may be made one 
 of mere observation. 
 
 Gonzales Zarco maroons his rabbit on the island, and 
 four centuries later its descendants are, in this and in that 
 respect, unlike our rabbits a matter, apparently, of new 
 circumstances, new needs, new actions, and the whole of 
 the Lamarckian or other formula. The rabbit, made by its 
 needs in the old environment, is here surely remade by its 
 needs in the island. But it is brought to England, and is 
 found not to be a new rabbit at all, but just the same old 
 one. The very individuals which were brought to this coun- 
 try returned, in four years, to the almost complete image 
 of their ancestral form of their form for England for the 
 mainland. Now, the island of Porto Santo may differ to 
 any extent from the mainland, but the rabbit's environment 
 (if we use the word in Lamarck's sense) evidently does not 
 essentially differ in the one case and in the other. The 
 animal took all its circumstances with it. Over four 
 hundred generations among utterly new conditions could 
 not do more to alter the species than could be undone, by 
 a few seasons, and without generation, in this country. 
 
 Or consider Naegeli's great parallel experiment. He 
 brought a great number of species of Alpine Hieraceae from 
 their native elevation, in which they had lived for I do not 
 know how many years. They differed in well marked re- 
 spects from their relatives on the plains. And the question 
 arises whether that difference was a difference in the plants as 
 abstracted from their environment. Assuredly it was not ; 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 165 
 
 nature gives us no organisms abstracted from their environ- 
 ment. Naegeli planted and sowed them in the Munich 
 garden, and, from the very beginning, they were immedi- 
 ately and quite indistinguishable from the forms which had 
 always lived on the plains. The Alpine " characters " 
 disappeared at once, and did not return. Now, we find in 
 these Porto Santo rabbits, and in these Alpine Hieraceae, 
 just that experience which Lamarck considers to be the 
 basis of all transformation; yet we find no transformation. 
 New circumstances, new needs, and a consequent change in 
 organisation, these are to be the successive steps in the 
 secular modification of species. But if that change in 
 organisation were thus something separate from and only 
 mediately following after the new conditions, then we 
 should not, I suppose, find that these organisms immedi- 
 ately returned to their other form, when removed to their 
 other country. If the organism were something separate 
 from its circumstances, if it were only externally acted upon 
 by the latter, then we might expect that those changes in 
 form which, by the hypothesis, were slowly and indirectly 
 acquired, would be equally slowly and indirectly effaced. 
 But, in fact, the diverse conditions only affected the species 
 for the time during which they were submitted to them, and 
 there was no alteration of the species as existing abstractly 
 and independently of its environment. And, in fact, 
 species do not so exist. 
 
 In a word, the whole Lamarckian argument does nothing 
 but to split up relations which, to research, can only be 
 different aspects of the same forms and events, into an 
 ingenious collection of separate things, and of temporarily 
 separate events. Just as the form of necessity becomes a 
 quasi-phenomenal difference of need or desire, so does the 
 formal distinction of life and its circumstance become a 
 quasi-phenomenal difference of an abstract life, and a cir- 
 cumstance which is not its circumstance, in an external 
 action upon one another. And just as the Lamarckian 
 
1 66 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY 
 
 need does not exist for research, so neither does the 
 Lamarckian environment. 
 
 For, if a plant which has lived in warm and damp places 
 be transplanted to a dry and cool elevation, we certainly 
 find changes in it. But all those changes are results of the 
 kind which biologists call direct (there are no other kinds 
 in the world), and research works with the perfect assurance 
 of finding this and that physiological change to be in- 
 telligibly the result of this smaller air pressure, that greater 
 wind, that lower temperature, and so on. And if any one 
 finds it an extraordinary thing that those direct results 
 should be such as are suitable for the life of the organism 
 under those circumstances (if they are not suitable the 
 thing just dies), he may take himself to a well-worn meta- 
 physical discussion ; but there is one thing which he must 
 not do. He must not, like the authors whom we are con- 
 sidering, invent and place among the direct relations which 
 are known to research other indirect relations between 
 abstractions, such as the species, the environment, the need, 
 the struggle, the unity of the organism, and the adaptation, 
 which, by their ingeniously elaborated quasi-phenomenal 
 interaction, produce the proportioned and the advantageous 
 in organisms. 
 
 USE-INHERITANCE. 
 
 This factor of organic evolution is not subject to most of 
 the disadvantages which apply to the principle of natural 
 selection, and its argument is much more subtle than is 
 that of any other factor. For if acquired characters are 
 inherited, then the progressive functional adaptations of the 
 life of the individual are the variations for its offspring. 
 These variations are therefore determined in the direction 
 of greater adaptation to the conditions under which the 
 species lives. Variation is therefore not so much a change 
 as a resemblance, it is an effect, and, at least formally, an 
 intelligible effect, of the experience of the parent. 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 167 
 
 Over against this theory there arose the thesis that 
 acquired characters are not and cannot be inherited, and a 
 certain controversy which is probably familiar to the reader 
 is still carried on, though with abated vigour, over the 
 point. The best definition of the two forms of characters 
 is that of Delage. He says, " Innate characters are those 
 which have been contained in the fertilised ovum in some 
 form or other ; whether that form is known or not matters 
 little. Acquired characters, on the other hand, are those 
 which have been developed only through the action of the 
 surrounding conditions." And again, "An acquired, as 
 distinguished from an innate character, is introduced into 
 the organism without having been present either in the 
 ovum or in the spermatozoid ; and one must also add, 
 neither was it present in the fertilised ovum, for a character 
 which should result from a combination of rudiments con- 
 tained in the sexual elements would be innate and not 
 acquired, although it would show itself for the first time in 
 the products of the union." 1 I do not think that any 
 biologist would be dissatisfied with these definitions, which, 
 in fact, well represent the conventional distinction which was 
 used in that most barren discussion. I have already said 
 that the distinction answers to no difference in the world, that 
 there is no character which is not inherited, and that there 
 is equally none which is not also at the same time acquired, 
 and that characters are all the same in these respects. Is 
 this objection to the whole point of view competent ? 
 
 It is plain that the theorists distinguish between two 
 kinds of characters which are separate from one another, 
 and exist beside one another in the growing and adult 
 organism. On the one hand you have those which were 
 present, " in some form or other," within the fertilised 
 ovum. Now, these cannot have been present otherwise 
 than as represented by agents. For if they were there 
 merely in the sense that they were possible to the germ's 
 1 Delage, " La Structure du Protoplasma," p. 198. 
 
1 68 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 development, then they cannot be distinguished from the 
 acquired characters, which were undoubtedly possible to 
 that development, since, under certain circumstances, they 
 occurred. And it is equally certain that the characters 
 were not present in the germ as characters, otherwise they 
 would have been the characters of the germ, and not the 
 characters of the organism within the germ. Therefore the 
 innate characters were in the germ as separate unknowable 
 agents; separate, because otherwise some of them would 
 have been there only in possibility and not in quasi- 
 actuality ; and unknowable, because they are not there as 
 qualities, and we cannot know anything but by its qualities. 
 On the other hand, you have those characters which were 
 not present in the germ, but were "introduced into the 
 organism/' or were " developed through the action of the 
 surrounding conditions." If these characters are to lie 
 among those which were innate, then they also must be 
 represented by agents. For if they are nothing but modi- 
 fications of the innate qualities, then their possibility and 
 nature is entirely dependent on the latter, and they are 
 nothing but innate qualities which are usually latent through 
 life. Certainly they were as truly present in the germ as 
 were any of those which, on some principle or other, are 
 called innate. A man may grow extra muscle by exercise, 
 but it is man's muscle, and not fish's muscle, which he grows. 
 And not only are the acquired characters innate, in that 
 they are possible to the germ (and that is the only innate- 
 ness of which we know anything, or can at all credit), but 
 the innate qualities are also acquired. They are, to use 
 Delage's own definition of acquired characters, developed 
 through the action of surrounding conditions. It would be 
 ridiculous to deny that aspect of them. Parts are educated 
 by parts, and the whole is educated by the quality and 
 quantity of its food, by gravitation, air pressure, sense- 
 impressions, environment in general in a word, by nothing 
 but by those very surrounding conditions which were to 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 1 69 
 
 develop only the acquired characters. So far, the dis- 
 tinction seems to be only a logical distinction, since you 
 may look on every quality either as inherited or as acquired, 
 but it is not a valid distinction as between different classes 
 of facts. It does not answer to phenomenal differences, 
 though it receives, at the hand of the theorists, a quasi- 
 phenomenal form. And the matter might well be left at 
 this point, only we have not as yet seen what is the impulse 
 for the distinction, in the form in which we find it. 
 
 For you might assent to what stands above, and yet urge 
 that the conditions which bring about the acquired qualities 
 are known, and intelligibly related to the qualities which 
 they educate; but that the conditions which bring about 
 the qualities which are called innate are obscure, both in 
 their nature and in their working. In either case one has 
 to do with a physiology. But in the former, you will say, 
 the physiology is a plain matter of hypertrophy, hyperplasia, 
 atrophy, and coordination, from observed and intelligible 
 use or disuse, as well as of the direct action of the environ- 
 ment upon the organism. And in the case of the 
 conditions of the education of the innate qualities, we have 
 to do with the whole obscure physiology of the normal 
 individual development, with the yet secret and perhaps 
 unattainable " Entwicklungsmechanik" Now, I grant that 
 this is the case. Those qualities to which you can assign 
 an origin in actual process, of which you know the physio- 
 logical development, you call acquired. That is only 
 because you see the acquirement. Those qualities, on the 
 other hand, for which you cannot give the actual process of 
 development, nor relate them to the external conditions of 
 life, you call innate. But there is not on that account any 
 the less process, or any the less relation to the outer world. 
 Your distinction may be useful and safe until you suppose 
 it to answer to any difference in nature. For the accident 
 of our ignorance of the processes and conditions of the rise 
 of any quality, and the accident of our carelessness and 
 
I/O PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 apathy to the rationale of ontogeny, does not affect the 
 fact that there is a reason for the immediate existence of 
 every quality which you call innate, and that, in virtue of 
 that reason, the quality is, in the rise of the individual, 
 acquired. Nothing is merely inherited ; it is also worked 
 out, and the working out is the acquirement. And if all 
 qualities are thus, and in the same sense, acquired, so are 
 they also, all in the same sense, and as follows, inherited. 
 For as we earlier found that the separate agent for separate 
 characters was an unworkable hypothesis, and incompatible 
 with observation, we cannot allow that innate characters are 
 in the germ otherwise than in possibility; but the char- 
 acters which are called acquired are also possible, and are 
 therefore innate. 
 
 But you may still say that the distinction in question does 
 answer to a phenomenal difference, in this respect, that, 
 while both acquired and innate characters are alike innate 
 as regards their possibility to the germ, and are alike 
 acquired as regards the actually conditioned processes of 
 their appearance, yet the innate characters are those which 
 are inevitable, usual, or normal, while the acquired characters 
 are not necessary, and are exceptional and referable to 
 distinct disturbances of the organism. To that one might 
 answer, that the concrete organism knows nothing of the usual 
 or of the normal; and that the mere fact of the innate 
 qualities being common to a great number, and the acquired 
 qualities belonging only to a few (and that only because of 
 their special circumstances and habits), does not warrant us 
 in the least in drawing a distinction between them as 
 between different kinds of qualities. In the individual, a 
 quality is both inherited and acquired, even though it were 
 always present, or were the only example, in all organisms 
 and in all time, of that quality. The unusual differs from 
 the usual only very superficially. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Dr. George Wilson's paper on this subject in the Journal of 
 Mental Science, October, 1896. 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 171 
 
 Everyone admits that it is probable that the experience 
 of the parent will, in some way or other, affect the germ, 
 and therefore the offspring. The only point of disagreement 
 is as to the nature of these consequent changes in the off- 
 spring. Are they, or is there any reason why they should 
 be, or could we tell if they were, identical in kind with 
 those changes in the parent which gave rise to them ? For 
 those changes in the parent are said to be purposeful re- 
 actions to his special conditions of life, and it is argued that 
 the offspring may, if acquired characters are transmitted, be 
 more adapted to the special conditions at the start of life, 
 and may need less experience of becoming individually fit 
 for them] than was the case with its parent. Will, for in- 
 stance, the child of a man who has gone to live at high 
 altitudes, be born, on that account, with a comparatively 
 large thorax? Or, will a pianist's child be born with 
 comparatively well-developed digital muscles? And will 
 this comparative or unusual quality be, in each case, the 
 leading comparative or unusual quality in the child ? 
 
 It is very hard to observe facts in this relation, and, since 
 the manner of organic life always admits of a selection, I 
 cannot conceive an experiment which wculd throw light on 
 such a question, however long it were sustained, and how- 
 ever carefully it were executed. That is to say, the matter 
 cannot be elucidated by the mere comparison of marks in 
 parent and offspring, even for many generations, and in ex- 
 quisitely determined conditions. The only method of 
 exploring the question would be through the whole physio- 
 logical history of the germ, and of its development. If you 
 will permit me to use general terms for those of the 
 hypotheses, I will say that as there is no particular in the 
 germ to which the particular of the soma corresponds, the 
 extra development of one particular in the parent is not 
 necessarily passed on to the offspring. On the other hand, 
 the whole germ, as a living unity with particulars of its own, 
 will be altered in those particulars by its trophic and other 
 
172 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 physiological conditions. And it seems to me that it is 
 absolutely necessary that we should know this intermediate 
 germ form, and how it relates to the soma whence it comes, 
 as well as how it relates to the soma which springs from it, 
 before we can say what degrees and kinds of effect the 
 particulars of the parent have on the far other pattern of the 
 particulars of the germ, and what degrees and kinds of 
 effect the particulars of the germ have upon the particulars 
 of the embryo. For here is a case in which the whether is 
 hopeless without the how, for the latter determines the pos- 
 sibility and the nature of an effect upon the offspring from 
 a particular quality in the parent. 
 
 If you record sounds with a phonograph, you do not re- 
 ceive again the identical sounds. Some are omitted, and 
 others are accented beyond their proportions. This coarse 
 example is valid enough in so far as it indicates that the 
 qualities and physiological processes of the germ must ex- 
 ercise, in transmission, as it were, a selection and a distortion 
 of marks ; and that this distortion must seem arbitrary and 
 accidental to those who do no more than to compare the 
 marks at each end of the process, and do not, in theory, 
 even formally allow for the limitations and particular qualities 
 of what we may call, very crudely, yet with high authority, 
 the apparatus for transmission. It seems probable that 
 some acquired characters may be transmitted as such, and 
 that others may not be so transmitted, though they have 
 their transmission in another form. We have here, in fact, 
 but the old difficulty which arises when the organism is 
 looked on as made up out of its characters, as put together 
 out of separate qualities. For a minimal physiological 
 change in an organism may give you a great and conspicu- 
 ous mark, and a great and important physiological change 
 may not appear externally under our morphological, colour, 
 or other schemes. 
 
 The most serious difficulty with which the theory meets 
 is, that many marks and structures do their functions with- 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 173 
 
 out being physiologically used. Now, parts are to be ex- 
 plained, as regards their rise in the individual, by that 
 physiological use, or, in other words, in terms of nutrition 
 and stimulation. They therefore may immediately exist 
 without any reference to their biological " function." We 
 may justly infer from such a case, that the biological func- 
 tion, or external use, may be quite accidental to the or- 
 ganism, in that it cannot be made the ground for the present 
 existence of the part. And if it is accidental to the rise and 
 present existence of the part in the individual, it is not easy 
 to see how it could at any time, or through any factor, be 
 otherwise than accidental to it. There are two ways out of 
 this difficulty, each of which is as fatal to the theory as the 
 other. You may, on the one hand, relegate such parts and 
 marks to the sphere of the rival factor, or you may suspect 
 that we have not, in such a case, got hold of the true and 
 concrete use of the part. But, in fact, the principle raises 
 that difficulty for itself. For it insists on finding an ulti- 
 mate physiological rationale for separate proportions and 
 other marks, which are certainly not capable of being 
 directly interpreted in terms of actual process. It makes 
 shipwreck upon the self contradictory principle of the com- 
 plete and self-dependent existence of isolated characters side 
 by side with one another, whether they be physiological, 
 morphological, or what you please. 
 
 No credible examples of the operation of this factor, even 
 in the sphere of conjecture, have been given, except for a 
 few simple hypertrophies and coordinations. That is be- 
 cause there are so few " characters " which have any in- 
 telligible derivation from their abstract use. Yet so long as 
 this external use is held to be the beginning and end of ex- 
 planation, I do not see that any better principle than that of 
 use-inheritance is open to us. It is better than that of 
 natural selection in the following point. Whereas the latter 
 gives us the external adaptations of parts to one another, 
 and to the environment, as having happened purely by 
 
1/4 PRQBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 accident, the former gives them to us as having been externally 
 adapted to one another during the lives of certain ancestors, 
 by an hypothetical set of physiological processes. Each, 
 alike, abstracts from the rationale of ontogeny, but the 
 principle of use-inheritance affords us a rationale some- 
 where. 
 
 NATURAL SELECTION. 
 
 Natural selection is the principle by which advantageous 
 qualities lead to life and to reproduction, and the want of 
 them to death and to elimination ; so that, in a given 
 environment, and in a given rivalry for the means of sub- 
 sistence, the organisms which are best fitted in certain 
 respects for certain functions escape destruction. This 
 principle thus secures the perpetuation of advantageous 
 variations. The gradual modification of species consists of 
 the accumulation of such changes as become possible and 
 are advantageous in relation to every change in the environ- 
 ment. The variations which offer themselves to natural 
 selection may, so far as the abstract statement of the 
 principle is concerned, be fortuitous; that is, it is not 
 necessary that they should be intelligibly related in their 
 origin to the functions which they are to subserve. The 
 principle of natural selection has been so admirably ex- 
 pounded in many writings that it is not necessary to illustrate 
 it in this place, nor to clear it from certain objections which 
 appear irrelevant. But it is not to be supposed that the matter 
 is an easy one. The principle is difficult to understand. 
 
 It is easy to make a statement of natural selection. But 
 the principle is supposed to be nothing more than a general 
 expression for a great number of different events in the lives 
 of animals and plants events which all lead in one direc- 
 tion, that of greater fitness to their conditions. But the 
 manner of these facts as occurrences in nature cannot be 
 defined or described in detail. I can fully understand the 
 position of those who regard natural selection as the sole 
 factor in the development of all adaptations, and in the 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 1 75 
 
 modification of species ; but I can also understand those 
 who hold that natural selection is, first, inadequate even to 
 the formal explanation of these things, and then a mere 
 name for hypothetical events which never occur at all. It 
 is important that we should not base our judgment of 
 the principle on its undoubted ingenuity or on its facility. 
 There may be nothing incomplete or prima facie self-con- 
 tradictory about Darwin's world, and yet it is not on that 
 account necessarily the real world. 
 
 Natural selection alone is sufficient to account for organic 
 evolution. Or, it has a place along with other factors in the 
 development of new forms of life. Or, its effect is merely 
 to inhibit certain and, after all, perhaps imaginary, because 
 always inhibited variations from the type, and to make for 
 the stability of species. These are very different positions 
 to hold, yet you have well-known names behind each of 
 them, and many who unite in giving the utmost respect to 
 the name of the principle differ even so much as regards the 
 actual content which they read into it. And this fact alone 
 is curiously significant in relation to the supposed derivation 
 of the principle of natural selection from facts which have 
 been observed. 
 
 Now, the struggle for existence is that upon which 
 natural selection primarily depends, and it is that which we 
 must first consider. It is a conception which at first sight 
 includes so many and such different events in the organic 
 world that it is not easy to find what is essential in it. We 
 are probably safe in saying that, in the Darwinian sense, a 
 struggle may be made out between organism and organism, 
 species and species, and between species and environment 
 in every case and in all respects. Even the parts of a 
 creature, as Roux has taught, and as even Weismann has 
 now come to believe, struggle against one another. The 
 struggle, as between two forms, may be traced through the 
 most complex and indirect paths. Of course, no one in 
 this connection means an active conflict, or a direct and 
 
1/6 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 immediate slaying of one another. In any case, the relation 
 receives a more or less statistical form, as indicating 
 tendencies to interfere with one another, rather than a set 
 and actual interference among their activities and changes. 
 On the whole, organisms do not seem to do this and that, 
 and also struggle with one another, but they struggle with 
 one another in doing this and that and all the rest. 
 
 In a word, whatever they do, organisms and the part of 
 organisms struggle with one another and with their environ- 
 ment. The conflict is an aspect of all their qualities and 
 activities which have an external use. Find a relation, one 
 may say, between species, or between individuals, and you 
 will find that this relation, merely formally and as a relation, 
 may receive the form of the Darwinian struggle. By swift- 
 ness and cunning, by strength and weapons, by beauty and 
 valour, as well as by ugliness and cowardice, by every 
 instinct and habit, and by every form and quality and part 
 that can be named, creatures struggle for existence, Against 
 cold and heat, damp and dry, and all natural features of 
 the earth, as with their environment, all organisms continu- 
 ally struggle. The struggle for existence is one form for 
 all organic relations, and there is no quality of organisms 
 which, by acuteness of research, or by ingenuity of con- 
 jecture, may not be found to have a certain use, and there- 
 fore to be a certain weapon. The very relations of members 
 are, as we have seen, not incapable of this very form. The 
 germinal layers, and later the tissues and organs of the 
 body, and indeed any elements into which you may, on any 
 principle whatever, divide it, struggle amongst themselves 
 for food, for space, and for representation in feeling, so that 
 this struggle has been made into one of the factors of 
 ontogeny, as an event which takes place. The mother 
 struggles with her child for nourishment. All individuals of 
 one sex struggle with one another for those of the other sex. 
 Parents struggle for representation in their offspring, and 
 even forgotten ancestors, we are now told, are separately 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 1/7 
 
 within us, conflicting among themselves for another sight of 
 the sun. Latent and alternative qualities, as we saw in the 
 last chapter, struggle together for appearance. 
 
 You will say that we have left the struggle of the natural 
 selection doctrine. I think not ; but in any case we must 
 go further before we come back. For the conception of 
 just such a struggle (I do not say selection) is not confined 
 to biology. Ideas are represented as existing separately, 
 mobbing round the trap-door under the stage. Motives 
 struggle together, and so do faculties. Tendencies never 
 do anything else, and motion in a curve is the conflict of 
 two movements with different accelerations at right angles 
 to one another. 
 
 Now, in all these cases take the form which is common 
 to them the struggle is in no case what happens or what 
 we see. What happens and what we see is in all cases the 
 result of the struggle, and the latter is a certain form of ex- 
 planation, quite just in its way, but unable to boast of 
 observation. The struggling elements are the ideal ab- 
 stracted components of the event, and the method in 
 general is nothing but the finding of the imaginary straight 
 coordinates of the curve. And this is the case no less in 
 the Darwinian struggle between a species and its environ- 
 ment, than in the conflict for nourishment between a 
 mother and child. It is not from observation that we find, 
 in the latter, a pair of hungry wolves, but because we know, 
 on some principle, that they must be so, just as we know 
 that the members of our bodies must struggle together for 
 space, for stimulation, and for nourishment, and just as we 
 know that a species must struggle with all other species 
 with which it comes in contact. Thus we may take 
 together all forms of the struggle, the most peaceful with 
 the most turbulent, inasmuch as these characteristics are 
 merely accidental to the meaning of the conflict, as it is 
 used in theory, and as it does not take place, as a set of 
 special events, in nature. 
 
 M 
 
178 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 It comes to be the question, why should we speak of two 
 things as interfering with one another, rather than as being 
 related to, or conditioning one another in such and such a 
 way? 
 
 You justly say of a honeycomb pattern that its six- 
 sided figures are circles pressed together. Only, you do 
 not mean that they are in fact circles, or circles otherwise 
 than in your imagination. You mean that the figures 
 might be ideally constructed by conceiving separate circles 
 to struggle together for space, until they should come to 
 the honeycomb equilibrium. In the case of the many-sided 
 bubbles in a frothy lather, you may, more truly, speak of 
 spherical elements struggling with one another, for, if one 
 were taken alone, it would of course be spherical. Only, in 
 fact, no one of them is alone, or is, otherwise than in your 
 imagination, spherical. And if you say that there is not 
 room enough for all the bubbles, and that they are spherical, 
 I shall answer that the bubbles are many-sided, and that 
 there is room enough for what bubbles there are. Now, 
 you, for the moment, are looking at the bubbles as unre- 
 lated to one another, as ideally existing separately from one 
 another, and as, therefore, externally conflicting with one 
 another ; but I, for the moment, am looking at what is in 
 fact, and am taking the bubbles as they concretely exist, 
 and are made by one another. For you say that they 
 struggle against their limits, but I know them only by their 
 limits, and, indeed, find them to be nothing but their limits 
 and conditions. 
 
 You justly say that the mother and child are continually 
 struggling with one another as two separate individuals who 
 draw upon a common supply of food. But you only say 
 this so long as you look on them as two separate organisms, 
 not essentially related to one another, yet both requiring 
 support from a third abstraction, the common fund of 
 nourishment. Research shows you nothing like a struggle, 
 because research, as we have often seen, knows nothing of 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 179 
 
 such isolated and abstract agents. These two are not more 
 truly two than they are one, and there is no more reason 
 for speaking of the division of the fund of nutrition between 
 them than there is for speaking of the struggle for food 
 between the organs of one body. Yet even these organs 
 are looked on as abstract unities, and as, in consequence, 
 only externally interfering with one another, that is, strug- 
 gling together in those respects in which they are related. 
 It is only by denying the actual relations between mother 
 and child, or between organ and organ, that one can come 
 within sight of the point of view of struggle from which 
 these differences in unity appear as mere differences in 
 contingent collision. What happens and what we see is an 
 intelligible harmony. But it is open to us to regard certain 
 elements in this intelligible relation as limited, cramped, 
 and repressed by a struggle with the other elements, just 
 because there is a relation, which is thereby formally 
 regarded as unintelligible. And that point of view is 
 arrived at by looking at the elements, not as they are, for 
 they are nothing but their limits, but as ideally existing 
 without limits or relations, and as externally and accident- 
 ally encroached upon. 
 
 You may truly say that, in the embryo, the alternative 
 characteristics of sex struggle together for the privilege of 
 becoming phenomenal, and you can, as we have seen, quote 
 in your support the masters of biology. But the condition 
 of your doing so was found to be that you should postulate 
 a real (quasi-phenomenal) existence, as for a separate 
 object, for something which no more really exists than does 
 the sphere in the bubble of the foam. You must, if a sex- 
 character is to struggle and conquer or be repressed, regard 
 its ideal presence in the whole scheme as the presence of 
 an agent which is its inner nature, and is itself absolute 
 and unconditioned, except by the external struggle. If 
 the male qualities are to struggle with the female until 
 one set appears, then we have to do with an hypothetical 
 
l8o PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 process which we do not observe, but which we judge to 
 exist because of what we call its results. And the nature 
 of our judgment is that we mistake ideal abstraction for 
 physiological analysis, and postulate a real struggle which 
 can never exist because its elements can never exist. 
 
 And it is in no other way that you speak of the struggle of 
 species with species, or of species with the natural features 
 of the earth. The tendency of reproduction to outrun the 
 means of subsistence is one side of the war between a thing 
 which is regarded as without relations or limits, and those 
 conditions themselves. The latter, therefore, appear to be 
 mere cramps and fetters externally imposed. The struggle 
 for existence is the imaginary struggle of those movements 
 into which rest may be resolved, and as the latter struggle 
 does not occur and is not seen, so neither does the former 
 occur or appear. The view of nature which regards organic 
 differences as in continual direct or indirect conflict with 
 one another is, as regards nature, quite gratuitous, and, as 
 regards science, quite abstract. A species is at no time, in 
 fact, more numerous than can be supported by its means 
 of subsistence, and it seems probable that it never comes 
 near to such a limit. "But it has enemies," you say, 
 " and other limits to its numbers ; it has a low rate of in- 
 crease, or the young perish in great numbers ; and so on." 
 Certainly that is the case, and no one would ever deny 
 that the numerical strength of a species is intelligible in 
 relation to the conditions of its individuals. The indi- 
 viduals are related in infinite ways and directions, and as 
 the conditions change, so will the number of individuals 
 change. But it is only so long as the inquiry remains 
 purely formal and hypothetical, regarding the species, 
 falsely, as an individual or agent, or, becoming a research, 
 remains merely on the abstract statistical plane, that the 
 appearance of the Darwinian struggle can be left to us. 
 Abstractly, one can look on species as bodies which are 
 always trying to expand, but which come into collision with 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. l8l 
 
 one another, and so remain at an equilibrium of tension. 
 But that " trying to expand " is, as an account of fact, 
 merely imaginary. What is an attempt or a tendency 
 which is not a fact and an event ? Now, this attempt is 
 always inhibited, and it never becomes a fact. Nor does 
 the supposed complementary repression of it become a 
 fact. The struggle between species or between the members 
 of a species, being, as we understand, a conflict by means 
 of all qualities which have external uses, is no more a 
 special phenomenon of natural history than the struggle 
 between the members of my body is a fact of physiology. 
 In either case we have to do with nothing more than with 
 a merely general anthropomorphic expression for relation. 
 
 The conception is formal, not by the accident of our 
 ignorance, but of necessity, because there is no relation of 
 individuals which does not come under it as fully and as 
 well as all the others. In so far, for instance, as an 
 organism is adapted in this or in that respect to one set of 
 conditions ; it is probably ill adapted in this or that respect 
 to another set of conditions. Thus, in every respect in 
 which the creature may be said to have an environment, it 
 is locally and otherwise confined by the limits of various 
 circumstances. Specialisation of any kind imposes answer- 
 ing limitations on the species, and it is against these 
 limitations that the species is supposed to struggle. But 
 these limitations belong to its character ; they are, as it 
 were, its obverse ; and, unless we are to represent an 
 organism as divided against itself, we cannot represent it as 
 divided against its environment. For we may put the 
 whole of the Darwinian struggle into this form, " an organic 
 species strives to expand numerically, and the environment 
 of every kind strives to repress its numbers ; that is to say, 
 an organic form in all its relations strives to expand numeri- 
 cally against those limits which belong to and may be said 
 to be its form." Now, this strife, being universal in organic 
 relations, is not a particular relation here and there. And, 
 
1 82 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 in order to arrive at this expression of all the relations in 
 the form of a struggle, you have only to follow the familiar 
 Malthusian method of abstracting reproduction from its 
 conditions (which are itself), and then bringing those 
 conditions externally to bear upon the supposed uncon- 
 ditioned reproduction. 
 
 The struggle is thus not only a universal form, but it is 
 also one which cannot be filled, and is therefore inapt for 
 research. For, to fill in the form destroys it, and to give a 
 detailed account of a relation prevents you from any longer 
 calling it a struggle. For the struggle is between abstract 
 agents without conditions. And research, as we have seen, 
 destroys all hypotheses which work with such agents, simply 
 because research establishes concrete relations at every 
 point. Thus it destroyed the mere difference or discrete 
 quality of the first postulate, and the mere identity or an- 
 thropomorphic agent of the second. And thus, in the third 
 place, it knows nothing of the elements of the biological 
 struggle, the unconditioned species, the abstract organism, 
 or the complementary abstract environment. For all these 
 are fictions ; they are metaphysical distinctions which have 
 received, at the hands of the theorists, the form of quasi- 
 phenomenal difference. 
 
 How little the elements in these struggles really exist, 
 and how little the Darwinian struggle is itself a fact of 
 natural history, may be seen from the words of that biologist 
 himself. After remarking that there must be conditions 
 which check the increase of a species, and sometimes bring 
 it to an end, he goes on to say : " If asked how this is, one 
 immediately replies that it is determined by some slight 
 difference in climate, food, or the number of the enemies ; 
 yet how rarely, if ever, we can point out the precise cause 
 or manner of the check." In other words, one immediately 
 replies with the form of the struggle, yet how rarely, if ever, 
 we can fill up the form in the least, or point to any con- 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 183 
 
 crete struggle at all. As I said, the struggle for existence 
 is nothing which exists or which we see. 
 
 It has often been urged that this conflict does not signify 
 any actual enmity, dissension, privation, or any struggle in 
 the sense of direct physical opposition, and that nature hides 
 her frowning providence under a smiling face. And it is 
 only just that we should remember this, its author's own 
 caution, in the study of the theory. But we may also notice 
 that if the relation of individuals or species is to be called 
 "interference," rather than "condition," or even "coopera- 
 tion," there ought to be some sanction for the special term. 
 Now, that sanction could hardly be given except from ob- 
 servation of just such natural atrocities as we are told not 
 to expect and to leave out of account. Or, at the very 
 least, it requires that one should be able, more certainly and 
 more constantly than is implied in Darwin's " rarely, if 
 ever," to point out the " precise cause and manner of the 
 check." We might yet be persuaded by a tale of natural 
 atrocities and catastrophies. But such a tale does not come 
 before us, and Dr. Stirling's study of the struggle, which he 
 bases wholly upon the comparatively insignificant part which 
 is played by slaughter in nature, seems, therefore, to be re- 
 levant and complete. This struggle, he shows, does not 
 correspond to any observed events and processes in nature, 
 whatever else it may correspond to. After exhibiting Dar- 
 win's impressions at the time of the journal, Dr. Stirling 
 well says : " So far, we have, on the part of Mr. Darwin, one 
 sole reference to life, life infinite in its numbers, infinite in 
 its varieties, and there is not as yet a note, a hint, a whisper, 
 of those mortal straits in bitter struggle from whose fatal 
 pressure only the fittest emerge. No doubt there is strife- 
 life in some only through death in others. But yet scarlet 
 blood cannot be called the colour of the scene. There 
 is infinitely more of a smile in it than of a shriek. What is 
 savage is, in its paucity, out of all proportion to what is 
 tame." (" Darwinism/' part ii., chap, v.) 
 
184 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 Delage, in his remarkable work of 1895,* sets down in 
 order those objections to the commonly received views as 
 to the adequacy of natural selection, which have seemed to 
 him and to others to be insuperable. These objections 
 combine, according to him, to prove that the principle can- 
 not give rise to new species, and that it is not adequate to 
 the explanation of organic evolution. But, as they are fully 
 as conjectural as Darwin's principle itself, they do not seem 
 to be very final. They stand over against the irrefutable 
 proofs, and never come to mix with them. Their value 
 seems rather to be, that they show that one may uphold al- 
 most any point of view upon this plane of conjecture. The 
 author, in introducing them, remarks that "natural selection 
 is an admirable and a perfectly just principle a point upon 
 which the whole world is agreed ; but the limits of its 
 power, and the possibility of the formation of new specific 
 forms through its agency, are still matters of debate. It 
 seems, indeed, to have been thoroughly proved that the 
 principle has no such power." 
 
 Yet, for just that task and for no other, was natural selec- 
 tion introduced into the language. When its occupation is 
 gone, one wonders in what sense the principle remains " ad- 
 mirable and perfectly just." All that one can say about it, 
 except that it merely occurs, is here denied ; but its unquali- 
 fied occurrence is not denied. And this is so because you 
 cannot deny a form like that of the struggle for existence, as 
 you can deny a fact. The strength of the Darwinian theory 
 is that it tells us nothing ; not that it tells us things which can 
 either be proved or refuted. The objections to the principle, 
 most of which have become classical, are as follows : 
 
 " i. The causes of variation are weaker than those of 
 fixity ; and the latter must therefore overcome the former. 
 
 " 2. Selection is impotent, because the greater number of 
 the characters which it is supposed to have developed are 
 useless, and thus give no opportunity for its action. 
 1 " La Structure clu Protoplasma," p. 370. 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 185 
 
 " 3. There are numerous useful characters which selection 
 cannot have formed, because their usefulness only shows 
 itself when they are fully developed. 
 
 u 4. Variations, even when they are useful at every degree, 
 are not useful enough to create an advantage which can be 
 seized by natural selection. 
 
 " 5. The selection of fortuitous variations cannot give rise 
 to species, because these variations are isolated, and because* 
 in order to give rise to a real advantage, they would have to 
 bear on several characters at one time. 
 
 "6. Selection is impotent because the variations upon 
 which it might take hold are ceaselessly destroyed by sexual 
 intermingling. 
 
 " 7. Selection is not the true cause of the formation of 
 species, because, if it were real, however feeble were its 
 effects, it would transform a species in much less time than 
 that which is evidently necessary for such a transformation j 
 and, for the transformation of a species in a reasonably long 
 time, the necessary protection is so weak that it becomes 
 illusory." 
 
 Certain of these objections are little more than a criticism 
 of the ordinary use of the " character" as the ultimate unit of 
 biology, and they all show the impossibility of arriving at 
 any agreement upon these debated "factors," except by 
 means of a general theory of the nature of the qualities of 
 organisms. Take, for instance, the second of the above 
 objections. What are these useless characters which selec- 
 tion is supposed to have developed ? Clearly, the generic 
 morphological characters. Delage quotes Naegeli as saying 
 that " if the theory of selection were true, the most useful 
 characters ought to be the most firmly fixed. But quite the 
 opposite is the case. The most constant characters have 
 always an anatomical arrangement, independent of adapta- 
 tion and utility. Such are the arrangements of leaves, 
 opposite in the Labiatae, spiral in the Borragineae, the division 
 of the terminal cell, in transverse planes in most Algae, in 
 
1 86 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 oblique planes in certain mosses and in the vascular crypto- 
 gams, and so on. Darwin admits that these are indifferent 
 characters, which have been fixed, at one time or another, 
 by the nature of the organism and the surrounding con- 
 ditions, and have become constant without the aid of 
 selection. But," says Delage, " if such characters can have 
 been fixed in such a manner, the others may have had a like 
 origin, and selection becomes useless." 
 
 Here we have no distinction made between morphological 
 and other characters ; they all lie side by side as similar units. 
 If such speculation ever thought of natural conditions and 
 processes, it would not fail to see that the proportions of an 
 organism, for instance, are of a very different kind from its 
 colour. Further, we have, in this second objection, the 
 astonishing premiss that the greater number of the isolated 
 characters are (mediately, one must suppose, as well as 
 immediately) useless, and exist thus beside other characters 
 which are useful. We have already had occasion to see how 
 little, even from the biologist's point of view, this " useless " 
 means, but we may notice that it is here thrown down as 
 though it were an absolute distinction between kinds of 
 characters. 
 
 But, taking these objections in order, we may find the first 
 to be credible in point of fact, inasmuch as species do not, 
 so far as we know, change, but baseless in point of argument. 
 Delage shows that " if, in the first generation, one in a 
 thousand of the individuals is affected by a particular 
 variation, in the next generation there will only be one in a 
 million so affected, the proportion being reduced with 
 extreme rapidity, and soon arriving practically at zero." On 
 what basis this calculation is made I am quite unable to see. 
 
 Of the second we may say that it is impossible for us to 
 deny a certain use of function to any part of the organism ; 
 first, because our knowledge is rarely complete enough to do 
 so, and then, more surely, because the part or mark in 
 question arose and is maintained with and by the rest, and 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 187 
 
 is therefore implied in the development of marks and parts 
 which are known to have a certain use. 
 
 The third, that structures which are supposed to have 
 been educated by selection, would have been useless in their 
 earlier and less developed stages, is also quite as much an 
 objection to the principle of use-inheritance. For if they 
 were useless, then they would be unused. It is a common 
 error to suppose that the latter factor has a wider scope 
 than the principle of natural selection. Now, this objection 
 shows how impossible is a science which is based on the 
 external uses of organic differences. It further shows that 
 no principle should be used in the explanation of phylogeny 
 which is not also able to take its place in the explanation of 
 ontogeny. But that is to say the same thing over again. 
 For such useless earlier stages occur also in ontogeny. 
 They have their function in the embryo, and the Darwinian 
 might well urge that since this is so they may also have 
 had their function in the adult of long ago. And in 
 fact this is the ordinary answer to this objection. The 
 structures are useless, in the earlier stages, for that end 
 which they now subserve, but they were useful for other 
 purposes of which we know little or nothing. And so the 
 matter remains one of empty conjecture. 
 
 The fourth is based upon the Darwinian form of gradual 
 modification. That " gradual " or " by infinitesimal steps," 
 is a trick to cheat our perception of the profound difference 
 of first and last. But it becomes a treacherous instrument 
 when the selection of such minute variations is pictured in 
 detail. For such a very small modification cannot have its 
 special advantage in the struggle for existence. In his 
 comments upon this objection, Delage brings forward 
 points of great interest, but the whole discussion has its 
 deepest interest on account of that utter abstractness which 
 is essential to considerations of natural selection. Pie thus 
 refers to Naegeli's argument : " Let us suppose that the 
 giraffe has taken a thousand generations to gain the length 
 
I S3 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 of its neck. If this neck is one metre longer than that of 
 its regularly proportioned ancestor, the gain has been one 
 millimetre in every generation. Now, a neck which is one 
 millimetre longer gives no advantage, even in times of 
 famine, and even in the case of animals which browse on 
 the leaves of trees. Darwin speaks of a variation of two 
 inches. But, even if we admit of this exaggerated variation, 
 one does not reach the end, for, in times of famine, the 
 animals do not die; they suffer and grow thinner, and then 
 fatten up when plenty returns. If some die, they are the 
 diseased and the aged, and those which gain some advan- 
 tage from any particular peculiarity are not the only ones 
 which come out of the trouble. But Naegeli," says our 
 author, " is mistaken, for not the diseased or the aged would 
 die, but the young which have only just been weaned." 
 For my part, I cannot guess which of the unfortunate 
 animals would succumb. 
 
 Such difficulty, such absurdity, arise even in the discus- 
 sion of the most simple possible illustration of the Dar- 
 winian theory. For you have here a case in which it is 
 just conceivable that three inches more of neck might save 
 the creature. But such cases are extremely rare, even in 
 the works which have been written in support of the theory. 
 " Some slight advantage " is all that is usually to be gained 
 not life. If the principle cannot be certainly applied to 
 this crucial instance of the giraffe, I do not think that we 
 can look for much help from it anywhere else. 
 
 The fifth objection has its power, because the theory of 
 natural selection is based upon the doctrine of the inner in- 
 dependence of organic qualities, but it has its weakness, 
 because it still, unnecessarily, remains conjectural. " Ac- 
 cidental variations cannot give rise to species, because 
 these variations are isolated, and because, to give a real 
 advantage, they would need to have effect on several 
 characters at the same time." Now, however clearly this 
 point is developed, and, however " many " variations are 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 189 
 
 proved necessary in complement to a primary variation, we 
 yet do not, by it, prove anything against natural selection, 
 except by the vaguest calculation of probabilities in cases of 
 which we know nothing. If variations are still essentially 
 independent, isolated, and numerable, it may be difficult to 
 imagine how the necessary assemblage of variations, in each 
 case, comes about, but, though it is mathematically im- 
 probable, yet it is still possible (" easy to imagine ") that 
 when a given change arises, those which are necessary to it 
 may arise within a few generations of the first, and that 
 these, all together, may give rise to an advantage which 
 should be considerable and efficient in the struggle for 
 existence. And so both the objection and the answer to it 
 remain entirely conjectural. That is only to be expected, 
 since they alike deal with abstractions which answer to 
 nothing in nature. And it is impossible that, in such cases, 
 any amount of debate and any number of illustrations, 
 should bring us at all nearer to a conclusion. But there 
 are no " isolated " variations, as there are no " isolated " 
 characters, and as we have already seen, the postulate 
 which underlies all the strength and all the weakness of the 
 Darwinian theory is an incredible thing. For that theory 
 is there in order to explain the external adaptation of part 
 to part. And here we find the objection that unless part 
 be already adapted to part, its mechanism of hypothetical 
 processes will not work. In fact, there is, physiologically, 
 and as regards inheritance, no variation but the variation of 
 the whole ; and research, in fact, both expects and reveals 
 an internal adaptation of all the parts. 
 
 I do not know whether any advantage is to be gained by 
 the consideration of very complex and astonishing adapta- 
 tions, but I will venture to say that no one will work 
 seriously through the histology, and embryology, and 
 physiology of any organ, and still remain satisfied with the 
 formal explanation of natural selection. For if we must 
 count as the biologists count, then the numbers of necessary 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 complementary parts, and variations, and stages, in the 
 development of the individual, in order to one another and 
 to the whole organ, might be enumerated for ever. 
 Natural selection is based on the analogy of artificial 
 selection. Now, the latter seizes upon external points and 
 insists upon them, but it never professes to externally adapt 
 point to point. The internal adaptation is maintained in 
 spite of the breeding, and is the limit for its transforming 
 power. Thus the artificial selection differs toto coelo from 
 the natural selection, which is supposed to effect the 
 external adaptation to one another of parts which are in- 
 ternally separate and absolute. 
 
 On a page of Dr. Stirling's book there are the following 
 expressions with regard to the eye : " The formation of the 
 eye by such variations as those of which a cattle-breeder 
 avails himself! " (Lyell.) " What seems to me the weakest 
 point in the (Darwin's) book is the attempt to account for 
 the formation of organs, the making of eyes, etc., by natural 
 selection." (Asa Gray.) ''About the weak points I agree : 
 the eye to this day gives me a cold shudder ; but when I 
 think of the fine known gradations, my reason tells me that 
 I ought to conquer the cold shudder." (Darwin.) "What 
 we have so often seen, namely, a simple casual variation as 
 such may somehow chance to hit, quite naturally, into the 
 conditions of its environment in some new way which shall 
 give it an advantage in the supposed struggle for existence. 
 And it is in this way that an eye is created ! " (Stirling.) 
 
 Why do these authors find a special difficulty with regard 
 to the eye ? For the perfection of the eye must be of the 
 most primary importance in the struggle for existence. 
 Everything in it has, most obviously, its own external use. 
 If adaptation is anywhere, it is here. Surely the eye should 
 be the last thing which should present any difficulty to the 
 Darwinian theory. But, in fact, here is the very source of 
 the trouble. They know too much about the eye. The 
 thing does not essentially differ from other organs ; but in 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. igi 
 
 this case our knowledge of the concrete necessities of pro- 
 portion and of coordination is very full. So fine is the ad- 
 justment of part to part, so exactly defined is the necessary 
 form and histological structure and innervation of every 
 part, that the independent variations of parts, as the 
 material for selection, is incredible. So close are the 
 limits to possible changes which are yet compatible with 
 function, that those who find it most easy to imagine cannot 
 here imagine the separate and external adaptation of part to 
 part by fortuitous variations and natural selection. Every 
 part does not, in this case at least, exist because of its 
 separate significance to the individual, and merely so exist. 
 The mere selection of this and that particular in the eye, 
 because of some advantage which it should confer upon the 
 species, is, as an account of process which has taken place, 
 here laid bare in all its emptiness. It is not possible to 
 suppose an advantage unless all necessary changes took 
 place at the same time, and this would be no less than the 
 alteration of the whole organism. The outer use is not 
 attained in independence of the immediate inner relations 
 of ontogeny and of maintenance, as the breeder's whim is 
 so attained. The whole sum of the relations, of every 
 kind, are one ; and while every relation which you find may 
 receive its teleological expression so that the number of 
 necessary adaptations is infinite no one of these relations, 
 in dogmatic abstraction from the others, can be looked on 
 as the complete rationale for the part. Reason does not 
 select things which have been unreasonably made, in 
 accordance with their adventitious uses, and thereafter 
 retain them, unreasonably stored in the anthropomorphic 
 agent of the hypotheses. Much rather, it makes and in- 
 forms them, and the uses of things are not separate from 
 their immediate origins. And I do not say this merely be- 
 cause "it must be so," nor because of the never-ceasing 
 recurrence, and the fascination of vitalistic or quasi-psychical 
 theories of organic life ; but rather because research ever 
 
PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 tends more and more to find that the purposefulness of the 
 processes of formation and maintenance and reaction is not 
 separate from, or accidental to, their necessary reciprocal 
 relations. Research knows less and less of the distinction 
 between cause and end, and the problem of the union of 
 mechanical necessity and adaptedness is one which, while it 
 is ever present to biological speculation, recedes before 
 detailed physiological investigation. Only, as I said, in the 
 case of the development of the individual is such detailed 
 knowledge wanting, and perhaps never to be had. But we 
 are not on that account warranted in assuming that the 
 formation of the body is not intelligible in the same way as 
 the hypertrophy and hyperplasia of organs, in relation to a 
 new demand upon them, are intelligible. And we are, there- 
 fore, not warranted in choosing a certain " use," for which a 
 certain particular is made, and in referring its origin, in 
 abstraction from all real process, to the agent immediately, 
 and to the factors of organic evolution mediately, and in 
 taking it as existing merely because of that use. For this is 
 the very suicide of science. It involves, for instance, that 
 independence of complementary variations which we have 
 discussed. 
 
 Of the sixth objection one can say nothing with certainty. 
 Does sexual intermingling favour variations or obliterate 
 them? Opposite views have been held upon this point, 
 and the union has obviously sometimes the one effect and 
 sometimes the other. But it seems certain that while the 
 union of different individuals may give rise, in this case, to 
 one, and in that case, to another variation, yet if you take 
 the whole species together, the consequence of free-breeding 
 would be that any particular variation would tend to 
 be eliminated by that very process which gave rise to it. 
 But then breeding is not free, and is variously restricted in 
 different species. Again, it is, I suppose, probable that, if 
 a variation arose in this case, it would be likely to arise in 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 193 
 
 others of the same species. But I do not see that we are 
 in a position to know anything about the matter. 
 
 According to the seventh objection, selection is not the 
 true cause of the formation of species, because, if it were 
 real, however feeble were its effects, it would transform a 
 species in much less time than that which is evidently 
 necessary for such a transformation. Now, this objection 
 seems to be relevant enough, inasmuch as species do not at 
 present get transformed, in spite of the fact that inde- 
 pendent variations still occur, and the struggle for existence 
 continues its deadly selection. This thesis, like so many 
 of its kind, is based upon a mathematical calculation, in 
 which there appear " single variations," and though the 
 calculation is correct enough in form, it must be evident 
 that our knowledge of conditions is too meagre to serve as 
 a basis for such an abstract method, even if the imaginary 
 unit had any existence in nature. 
 
 Now, large volumes might be filled with the barest 
 account of all the objections to, and the supports for, this prin- 
 ciple of natural selection. Hartmann's " Ergaenzungsband " 
 contains a great number. Virchow, Eimer, and many other 
 authors have reasoned admirably against it. Mivart has a 
 genius for insuperable objections, and so has Roux. But 
 the principle is hydra-headed ; it appears in biology and in 
 other subjects quite unaffected by the insuperable objec- 
 tions. It seems to be entirely a waste of energy to attempt 
 to disprove a form which has confessedly no content, by 
 leading against it the evidence from observation. On its 
 plane, as upon the plane of all the biology of hypothesis, it 
 is possible to plausibly present almost any conclusion. It 
 is not, therefore, a matter for research, or it would have 
 received a fixed authority long ago. It does not depend 
 upon, and it does not assist research. But it is a meta- 
 physical theory of organic adaptation. 
 
 And all that it says is this. Such and such (uncon- 
 ditioned) qualities or structures either fit their conditions 
 
 N 
 
194 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 or do not do so. Those which do so are those which we 
 see and which exist, and we necessarily interpret them in 
 relation to their conditions. Those which do not do so 
 neither exist nor are seen, and they are, in a word, purely 
 imaginary. 
 
 And the achievement of the method is not to explain 
 anything which is, but it is merely to afford us a transition 
 from the really unintelligible of accidental production, to 
 the formally intelligible of conditioned existence. It 
 enables one to follow, hypothetically, the production of the 
 parts of the system of the body, or of the organism and 
 environment, as unconditioned by the other parts of those 
 systems. Then, at a certain point which cannot be shown 
 as phenomenal, these parts come into collision with their 
 conditions, and those only which fit the latter (that is, all 
 those which exist) come to be selected. Thus the 
 Darwinian thunder-clap follows upon its proper blaze of 
 abstraction. And all that it succeeds in doing is to offer 
 to us an empty formula of explanation which enables us to 
 explain the parts as essentially unrelated to one another. 
 In this respect, and in harmony with the first postulate, it 
 is an alogical principle, and is necessarily, as in fact, 
 without interest to research. 
 
 The factors of organic evolution are thus attempts to 
 put together again the unity of the organism. For that was 
 first, as we saw, disrupted. The second movement was to 
 put it together again by means of the agent. This stage 
 did not complete the whole matter, because the action of 
 the agent was of necessity arbitrary and unintelligible, and 
 its products were not at the same time, and immediately, 
 the products of one another. So we have recourse, in the 
 third postulate, to the fiction of the becoming related to 
 one another of parts which were inwardly dissociated from 
 one another, or, if associated, then only joined by the 
 unexplored mediation of the idioplasm, physiological units, 
 or immanent soul. And this is the case, as we have seen, 
 
THE THIRD POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. 195 
 
 not less in the principle of use-inheritance than in that 
 of natural selection. 
 
 For when we regard the parts as existing solely by 
 reason of their external significance to the individual, in 
 abstraction from the actual processes of their rise and 
 maintenance, we are reduced to these factors or to the 
 popular doctrine of design ; and our error in each case is 
 the same. For we are dividing into two separate kinds of 
 events what are, to research, two sides of every organic 
 event. The abstract necessity of the event is, in each case, 
 given to us in the present, and the secret of its intelligible 
 relations to the rest of the individual is put away into some 
 distant age, it matters very little when. But if the harmony 
 of system is due, in any way, to the external putting to- 
 gether of ingeniously adapted parts, which have no essential 
 relation to one another, and are not each implied in all 
 the rest, if, that is, each part has just this one significance 
 which we call its function, and is no more than it then I 
 would rather subscribe to the doctrine of creation, as the 
 Darwinians expound it, as the least likely to interfere with 
 and to confuse the issues of research. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 
 
 OUR discussion of biological theory has centred round one 
 point. It was not from choice that we criticised every 
 theory by a study of its treatment of the unity of the or- 
 ganism, but it was because that attitude of the hypotheses 
 was evidently the most important, and often the sole, im- 
 pulse for them. The first postulate gave us the unity of 
 the quality instead of the unity of the organism, denying the 
 latter as it is known to research ; the second was forced to 
 reintroduce the unity as the anthropomorphic agent, or 
 maker of unity, and the third postulate derived every separate 
 and independent quality from its external significance to 
 the unity of the organism, but denied the actual relations of 
 the parts within the unity which we use in observation. A 
 central conception such as this deserves attention. This 
 unity, whatever else it is, is the very category of biology, 
 and we have seen, from the formality and emptiness of 
 its discussion, that we have to do with nothing but the dis- 
 cussion of a category. The unity of the organism is the 
 impulse for the doctrine of type, and for the theory of 
 vitalism. It is the beginning and end of the doctrine of 
 design. And we have followed it, as fully as their interest 
 seemed to warrant, through the hypotheses as to the deter- 
 mination of the form of the individual, and as to the origin 
 of organic adaptation by the transformation of species. 
 
 I need not, therefore, apologise for inquiring a little 
 further as to what the unity of the organism is, and what it 
 is not. And, in the first place, it is not any one of the 
 
 196 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 197 
 
 particulars of the organism. That is, it is not an agent. It 
 is not, for instance, abstract protoplasm. There are many, 
 I do not know how many, species of animals and plants. 
 Now, it is commonly assumed that there is a different pro- 
 toplasm for each one, and that their differences from one 
 another might be given, with a fuller knowledge, in the 
 definite differences of these protoplasms from one another. 
 But consider the vast number of species, and that within 
 each species there are innumerable individual forms which 
 definitely differ from one another. There are also innum- 
 erable different forms which have been, and which are not ; 
 and artificial selection shows us that there are innumerable 
 forms which are possible and which yet are not. There 
 are, further, yet other possible forms which would not be 
 viable, but which might pass through the earlier stages of 
 ontogeny, as every pathologist knows. Consider the num- 
 ber of these germs, and set down any estimate for it. The 
 germ, in each case, must have, according to the theory, 
 some difference in its protoplasm which contains the de- 
 termination of the individual form, and which determines it 
 definitely and rigorously. Then consider the number of 
 cytologically different somatic cells which belong to these 
 bodies, and lastly, consider the various kinds of protoplasm 
 in each of these cells. It is an inconceivable number of 
 different and definitely different protoplasms. 
 
 Then, on the other hand, consider the minuteness of 
 these cells, and that these protoplasms, while they are 
 theoretically different, are known to be similar within narrow 
 limits. They must all, for instance, preserve the functions 
 of assimilation, reproduction, and irritability. And lastly, 
 that the substance which we name protoplasm is unstable in 
 the highest degree, is always rising and falling in the rhythm 
 of metabolism, and is most easily susceptible to outer in- 
 fluences and subject to degenerations of various kinds. The 
 observed changes which take place within protoplasm dur- 
 ing division can hardly be dissociated from chemical change. 
 
198 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 Thus we have, on the one hand, a vast number of very 
 definite images, which are in some way determined as to their 
 form in the germ, and in every part of the soma through 
 later stages. And we have, on the other hand, this sub- 
 stance, protoplasm, the material which these germs and cells 
 contain, and are asked to believe that it, in all its change 
 and instability, is the guardian of the form of the individual, 
 and that, notwithstanding its necessary similarities in all 
 animals and plants, as well as its minute quantity in every 
 germ, its definite differences are the secret of the definite 
 differences of the organic images. Even were protoplasm 
 to remain the same, in a cell, without constant changes, 
 constant metabolism, and constant liability to accidental 
 alteration from without, we could still not find that there is 
 room enough in organic germs to allow of definite difference 
 in each germ, answering to the definite difference of its 
 image. But protoplasm does not remain the same for an 
 hour, and, if the common contention were a true one, 
 species would not remain constant for a day. 
 
 I am averse to conjectural calculations, but the reader 
 may amuse himself with this one. Set down as many 
 millions as you like, for the different individual forms of 
 animals and plants, and you will find that, even allowing for 
 no similarities between germ protoplasms, and for no limits 
 to their difference, it will be hard for you to invent a form 
 for the germ difference which shall allow of so many definite 
 differences in the same number of minute, and, after all, 
 plastic germs. Further, it must be remembered that a 
 germ, or a Protozoon, may be divided and yet live and re- 
 tain intact the image which is entrusted to it, and all the 
 evidence which we have goes to show that the protoplasm 
 of the germ is on the whole homogeneous as regards the 
 determination of the form of the individual. I do not 
 think that research will ever show, or that hypothesis is 
 justified in postulating, a definite difference or system of 
 differences within a germ, such as is required by the belief 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 199 
 
 that the form of the individual is determined, in its rise and 
 maintenance, by the special character of the germinal and 
 somatic protoplasms. If the germ were not comparatively 
 homogeneous as regards the determination of form, the 
 matter would be somewhat, but not greatly, more credible. 
 But, as it is, we are to imagine millions of different homo- 
 geneous characters of protoplasm, so widely dissimilar that 
 the continual physiological and accidental changes in each 
 do not affect its constant identity of character, still more 
 widely dissimilar because there is in each case only a 
 minute mass of the substance to exhibit it, and yet so 
 closely similar that all these millions of different protoplasms 
 are still protoplasm, assimilating, excreting, and growing. 
 There is small wonder that recourse has so often been had 
 to an expression of the difference of germs in the form of a 
 quasi-psychical principle. For there is no structural or 
 chemical difference which can be adequate to the multitude 
 and to the definiteness of these differences of determination. 
 Yet, as we have seen, the immanent soul is no credible way 
 out of the difficulty. 
 
 Further, the matter is made no simpler by the fact that 
 the differences between protoplasms which we do know 
 cannot answer to the differences in their determinations of 
 form. We have here only a special case of the old dis- 
 agreement between morphological and physiological facts 
 in the same organism. For as the adult morphological 
 proportions are not fully intelligible in terms of their 
 functions, so that we are led to distinguish between 
 homology and analogy, so also the potential morphological 
 proportions are not, it would seem, a function of the 
 physiological peculiarities of the germ which is to give 
 rise to them. For we may recognise the widest differences 
 in the chemical properties of the protoplasms of two nearly 
 allied Protozoa, and we may further distinguish between 
 them by wide differences as regards their consistency. 
 With the same morphological form, for instance, there may 
 
200 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 appear the widest differences as to the character of the 
 external covering which is excreted or built up. And in the 
 higher plants we may recognise the widest differences be- 
 tween the chemical properties of the seeds, and between the 
 chemical products of the parts of the grown plant, even 
 when the plants are morphologically closely allied. 
 
 I have no theory whatsoever as to the nature of the 
 essential differences of germs. Only, we cannot find it in 
 their chemical or structural or physiological properties. 
 When a somatic cell, for instance, reproduces the whole 
 form, we cannot fail to recognise that it does so, as it were, 
 in spite of its particular functions and its particular struc- 
 tures. And we are not, on the other hand, surprised to 
 learn that what can be known about the particulars of 
 germs leads us no nearer to an understanding of their form- 
 determining properties. We can only say that we do not 
 know the essential differences of germs and of protoplasms 
 in this respect, and that what differences we do know 
 appear to be wholly accidental and irrelevant to this 
 unknown essential difference. This seems to be equivalent 
 to the admission that there is no difference of germs or of 
 protoplasms in terms of which the possibilities of form 
 might be, even formally, expressed ; and for my part, 
 taking all the evidence together, I believe that this is the 
 case. Probably this difficulty has been the chief impulse 
 for the doctrine of isolated anthropomorphic agents. For 
 this essential difference of germ is the universal which 
 we cannot find as a particular apart from the others. 
 Certainly, all the differences of the germs must have their 
 place in the determination of the forms which come out of 
 them. Our uneasiness arises from the fact that we cannot 
 find, under any one particular form, differences between 
 germs which should answer intelligibly to the differences 
 between images. And all that we can know about 
 protoplasm is its fine structure and its chemistry. It is 
 not astonishing that we should be able to find in either of 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 2OI 
 
 these respects a difference which should be the essential 
 difference in question. 
 
 An interesting question does, however, arise in relation to 
 the stability of species, and to the definiteness of the form 
 which is " determined " by the germ, in that the substances 
 which we group under the term protoplasm are so unstable 
 as we know them to be. The consideration of this fact 
 not only leads us to lay less emphasis than is usually done 
 upon the germ as the adequate determinant, but it has 
 also led some to doubt whether we are not in the end 
 compelled to introduce some hypothetical agent into the 
 science, on the understanding that it is not phenomenal.^ 
 One may say, that it is improbable that the interpretation 
 of form can ever be made in relation to the germ from 
 which it arises. For instance, we have already seen that 
 the outer adaptation of the alternative forms of sex, and 
 of the successive forms of a cycle of generations, is so 
 complete and is carried out with such apparent disregard of 
 the possibility of a common homogeneous origin, that we 
 may almost despair of finding that male and female, in all 
 their qualities, are necessary results and the only possible 
 results of the development of a germ which is, as regards 
 them, truly identical. The choice between these so diverse, 
 so definite, and so complex forms, is made by a simple 
 alternative condition in the embryo. And we saw that if 
 these two forms are the necessary alternative results of the 
 development of one germ, then it is almost incredible that 
 they should be so nicely made for one another. Of the 
 adaptation we are sure. But our belief that the end or ends 
 of the development are intelligibly determined by the quali- 
 ties of the germ, and are so determined in every particular, 
 is, in the end, incompatible with our recognition of the plain 
 fact of the external adaptation, although it depends upon 
 a metaphysical assurance which one would not like to ques- 
 tion. The latter assumption is, that at any stage of the 
 1 As in the "Philosophy of the Unconscious." 
 
202 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 individual, germ, embryo, or adult, there is nothing present 
 nothing that can determine but the qualities of that 
 stage as they can be known to observation. It assumes 
 that the unity of the organism is not present as one factor 
 among others. But you see how inevitably, although I 
 believe viciously, one can hardly help turning again to 
 the quasi-phenomenal representation of the unity of the 
 organism. 
 
 All the theories of the determination of form by agents 
 which are in, but which are not, the protoplasm which we 
 know, are merely commentaries upon a general feeling that 
 this minute mass of unstable matter, the germ, cannot keep 
 intact the image which is entrusted to it, and cannot. contain 
 the whole unity of the organism : and that, even if the germ, 
 as we know it and without special agents, can determine 
 one form with that extraordinary definiteness which we 
 know, yet it cannot be the determination of two or more 
 different forms, which appear to be adjusted to one another 
 with an infinite complexity, in defiance of the necessities of 
 their common origin with one another, from an homogeneous 
 protoplasm. 
 
 For all these theories deny that any protoplasm which we 
 know can be the unity of the organism, that is, can hold the 
 image or the alternative images and no other, intelligibly 
 within it. Yet popular teaching ordinarily proceeds upon 
 the ground that there is a special protoplasm for every 
 specific, and therefore for every individual form, and that 
 the nature of this protoplasm is the complete determination 
 of the individual form. Now we know enough to be able 
 to contradict this statement, so long as it takes into account 
 any of those qualities of protoplasm which are, or which 
 may be known. But when it has recourse to qualities 
 which we neither know nor can know, then we can only 
 leave it alone as an hypothesis which is not aware even of 
 its own difficulties. Let us take an example. The protoplasm 
 of a somatic cell in a plant is necessarily very different from 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 2O3 
 
 the protoplasm in the ovule or pollen-grain of that plant, and 
 the differences lie before the eye. There is, however, in 
 that somatic cell, an identity with the germ cell, which is of 
 such a nature that the somatic cell can take its place in 
 reproducing the whole. Now, what is that identity? In 
 every particular which is known to research that somatic 
 cell is infinitely more like the somatic cells of other plants 
 than it is like the germ cell of its own plant. And the 
 identity is of such a nature that all these " superficial " and 
 phenomenal differences are as nothing to it. And I think 
 we have reason to believe that observation is likely, in its 
 progress, rather to increase our knowledge of " superficial " 
 differences between the germ and the somatic cells than to 
 lead us to some very striking phenomenal identity between 
 them. The presence of agents in each, to secure that 
 identity which does not reveal itself in any particulars that 
 we know, has, I think, been sufficiently dealt with. And 
 that identity is certainly not abstract protoplasm. 
 
 This matter has been admirably studied by Dr. Stirling 
 in " As Regards Protoplasm," but he leaves the reader in 
 just such darkness as we are in, that darkness to which an 
 unprejudiced study of the facts and the theories leads those 
 who attempt to find an expression for the immanence of the 
 whole in the part in the body of any creature. For the 
 identity in difference is not phenomenal as a difference 
 among others. It must not be quasi-phenomenally so re- 
 presented. And yet, let it be what it will, it is the beginning 
 and the end of this science of biology. 
 
 I f we ask whether it is the unity of feeling, we are not 
 necessarily recurring to the anthropomorphic conception 
 of the immanent soul. For the latter is an agent which 
 derives its only value from some sort of dim quasi-psychical 
 ideas as to what ought to be done, and which holds an 
 explicit scheme of the unity of the organism in its mind. 
 The unity of feeling is, on the other hand, no more than a 
 certain side of all changes which take place in an organism. 
 
204 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 Indeed, it has been made into the sole definition of an 
 organism. We need not question the probability of the fact 
 that there is in every organism a unity of feeling. It would 
 merely resolve itself into a discussion as to what we are to 
 consider as an organism and what as a colony, and no hard 
 line can be drawn upon that matter. Connection by fila- 
 ments of protoplasm is now often demonstrated where 
 before a complete wall was supposed to exist, and in any 
 case we need hardly demand such protoplasmic continuity 
 in order to the existence of the unity of feeling. Of course 
 colonies, between the members of which no continuity 
 exists, exhibit specific form, just as even bacterial cultures 
 have each their distinctive appearances. And perhaps this 
 fact alone should be enough to lead us to deny that feeling 
 has a place by itself in the development and maintenance 
 of the image. But it has so often been vaguely brought 
 forward as in some way the secret of unity that its claims 
 ought to be considered. Only, the mere fact that it is 
 something of its own kind, and again, that it cannot easily 
 be observed, gives it no special value in this connection. 
 
 The parts, changes, and experiences of an organism come 
 together to form a certain emotional tone. Pain and plea- 
 sure for these form the only distinction at which we have 
 generally arrived attend the manifestations of the creature's 
 life. We may look on these as variations from the usual 
 level of feeling, and we may suppose that level to have a 
 certain distinctive character of its own, although it is not 
 otherwise known than as departed from. But the fact that 
 the normal emotional tone is not merely the negation of 
 these its manifestations, is sufficiently shown, not only by 
 a more acute observation, which usually finds pleasure and 
 pain, but also by the fact that its level may be altered by 
 the stimulations which give feeling only by contrast to it. 
 It is always there, though it is not recognised except as 
 being changed. Its changes are recognised in proportion 
 to their suddenness and rapidity, and it quickly weakens or 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 20$ 
 
 eliminates them by rising or falling to the new level. We 
 must ascribe to the unity of feeling a permanent and con- 
 tinuous existence. But it is not easy to express it otherwise 
 than by the above clumsy metaphor of an ever-changing 
 level, with distinguished variations above and below it. 
 
 Now, this unity of feeling is a thing by itself, in that 
 there come into it all the parts and experiences of the 
 organism. It is thus like an agent which understands all 
 that is going on, only that in the latter case every difference 
 in the organism has its place as an explicit difference in the 
 mind of the agent, whereas in the case with which we have 
 to do the resultant state of feeling is an apparently 
 homogeneous unity, for which each change in the body has 
 its value, but in which each loses its character as a separate 
 thing. The unity of feeling has the additional advantage of 
 being a fact, whereas the agent is not a fact. 
 
 Now, a mere unity without differences will not help us. 
 But though homogeneous, as seen in its beginnings, this is 
 yet not without differences. Though the latter do not live 
 in it as separately recognisable elements, they yet open out 
 from it in an orderly development. I need not reiterate 
 that which everyone who is familiar with Hartmann's bio- 
 logical work knows already, how that author regards the 
 processes of the formation of the individual, organic reflexes, 
 habits and instincts, and even the psychologically implicit 
 movements of argument, as forming one kind ; and how he 
 regards that kind as, at any rate most easily, interpretable 
 in terms of feeling. Movement which takes hold on reason 
 without the mediation of understanding, development of 
 system of difference out of an idea which is no one's idea, 
 the rise of an orderly manifold out of a unity which pre- 
 cedes it and is immanent in it these all come nearest to 
 him in the analogy of the development of our explicit 
 thought and our explicit action out of the unity of feeling. 
 The "clairvoyance of the unconscious" is nothing but the 
 implicit reasonable articulation of that unity, and the in- 
 
206 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 genious argument which deals with it does little more than 
 to extend analogies from the unity of organic life. For as 
 reason without words instructs the creature and its parts to 
 movements which are purposeful, but of which it cannot see 
 the end, informing the building of the body, and all blind 
 instincts, so, and with no hard line of division, it is made to 
 seem in the end to come into light as the " truth within 
 ourselves," which " takes no rise from outward things." I 
 am not going to give a hurried exposition of Hartmann, or 
 of the interesting developments from him which are given 
 to us in Geddes and Thompson, and later in Drummond. 
 Here it is enough if we recognise that in the unity of feeling 
 we have for the first time come upon a unity which de- 
 velops its differences out of itself, and which is yet a 
 phenomenal factor in organic life. 
 
 The view derives its special interest from the fact that 
 both human experience on the one hand, and the simplest 
 reflex or habit or morphological structure on the other, are 
 accompanied by a specific change in feeling, which seems 
 to be of importance in every case. Undoubtedly, all the 
 tropisms and tactisms of the newer and living embryology are 
 nothing but terms for irritability; and irritability, because of 
 its apparently unintelligible and unexpected results, is easily 
 thought of as feeling. You may say " accompanied by feel- 
 ing " if you like ; it is a barren distinction, and, of course, 
 they may, and even must, be susceptible of a chemical in- 
 terpretation. It is familiar that the reactions of irritable 
 parts are first remarkable as having degrees and directions 
 which are answerable, not so much to the degrees and 
 directions of the stimulus, as to the advantages of the 
 organism. In this respect, the movements and the life 
 changes of the simplest animals, no less than the earlier 
 ontogenetic changes of the metazoa, lend themselves most 
 readily to an interpretation in terms of feeling, the complete 
 scheme of the life or the embryo being in some way present 
 in the unity of feeling. The demonic power of feeling, as 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 2O/ 
 
 shown in the insistence of lowly creatures upon their normal 
 activities, even under repeated hindrances, together with the 
 always purposeful nature of its manifestations, lead naturally 
 to the thought that here we have a principle which is capable 
 of retaining intact a reasonable scheme of unity, or an 
 image, throughout the most careless and cruel incursions 
 of circumstance. The development of feeling into the 
 actions which, even under unfamiliar conditions, are neces- 
 sary for the life, and its forethought which is past the power 
 of thinking, strengthen the impression that the unity of 
 feeling is the side of an organism upon which it takes hold 
 upon reason. Undoubtedly, it is urged, feeling is reason- 
 able; and that it seems to pass without break or barrier, 
 psychologically, into understanding, is made much of in 
 Hartmann's argument. 
 
 In feeling, for the first time, we come, therefore, to the 
 principle of the normal. This is the beginning and end of 
 vitalism. To take the simplest instance, departure from the 
 unity means pain, and the fulfilment of it means joy. Now, 
 feeling is, in science, always associated with the normal and 
 the abnormal, with the advantageous and the hurtful, but 
 usually, as it happens, by all the stiff joints and cranks of 
 the Darwinian mechanism. A certain experience is hurtful, 
 and, therefore, by natural selection, or what other factor 
 you please, it comes to be associated with pain. Always 
 empty, that form of explanation becomes, in the matter of 
 feeling, quite ridiculous. And we are left with the fact of an 
 immediate and intelligible indication on the part of feeling 
 as to what must be avoided and what must be approached. 
 It would seem as though we had here a function of the 
 organism which brings all other functions into the unity of 
 its own state, and determines them into teleological activity, 
 and suffices, formally, even for a sort of rational embryology 
 or physiological morphology. 
 
 And objections which might be raised upon the ground 
 that feeling has no power over the organism would be set 
 
2O8 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 down chiefly to inexperience. We might answer them by 
 bringing forward, in the approved method, the very miracles 
 in this kind. Stigmata, the determination of after and 
 complementary visual images by suggestion, the dilation of 
 vessels and the trophic influences of joy, and the poisoning 
 of the whole body by hate, envy, and terror, and a thousand 
 other remarkable effects might be accumulated. Intro- 
 spection itself, with all its partiality and its sharp division 
 as of mountains rising above mist, would furnish enough 
 evidence to show that even the changes in feeling which are 
 recognisable because of their sudden intensity appropriate 
 the most profound physiological effects. We early read 
 character on faces, too early to have learned it by mere 
 association, and progress in the art is due rather to experi- 
 ence of ourselves than to exhaustive analysis of others. 
 But the miracles, after all, are the least part of evidence. 
 The simple reactions of unicellular creatures, and the 
 activities of germinal and somatic cells, are, indeed, meta- 
 physically referred to chemical and mechanical properties, 
 and are rightly so referred. But they are never, in practice, 
 described, except with the implication of associated and 
 governing feeling. And since they are the movements of 
 organic individuals, it is impossible to describe them other- 
 wise. Activity upon occasion, and result upon cause, 
 would, in the ordinary practice of science, be interchangeable 
 terms, were it not that the former introduces, logically, the 
 conception of individuality, and physiologically, the media- 
 tion of the unity of feeling. Certainly, this unity has, in 
 respect of its tenacity of the scheme of life, and of the 
 pattern of form, in contempt of accident, in respect of its 
 unique unity as of an idea, into which differences come and 
 from which they are created and appear, and in respect of 
 its universality as a side of all organic changes and parts, a 
 strong apparent right to be called that unity of the organism 
 for which the theories seek. 
 
 But though we have in feeling an actual and efficient in- 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 2OQ 
 
 dication of necessity, and a factor of incomparable power in 
 organic life, and a certain unity which receives and creates 
 all the differences, yet we have not, in it, attained to that 
 unity after which the theories necessarily seek. It is not 
 the universal which is in all the parts, nor the unity in 
 which all qualities and periods, whether existent, latent, or 
 alternative, are made possible. It is not that which retains 
 the image or alternative images, so as to educate them from 
 the germ, or to restore them when they are mutilated. It 
 is not that which preserves the form in the encysted ciliate. 
 It will not, in fact, take the place of the anthropomorphic 
 agent of the theories, though it has, at least, the advantage 
 of not erring against the rights of physiology. 
 
 It is not adequate to this task because, in the end, itself 
 is only a part or aspect of the organism, and itself is con- 
 ditioned by the rest. What is to be painful and what is to 
 be pleasurable is dependent, I suppose, upon the structure 
 and condition which is already there. We do not escape 
 from " mechanism," although we are half trying to do so. 
 The normal is what is fitting to the rest, but the rest 
 is given. Every part can still only be referred to the others 
 in an endless round of reciprocity ; and the mere fact that 
 the parts are united in feeling does not warrant us in giving 
 a special place to the later as custodian of the image. 
 The stability and accuracy of the image, in spite of its 
 passage through the minute and unstable germ, and of its 
 working out through actual process in the complex 
 ontogeny, is not at all explained by the fact that the normal 
 is secured by feeling ; for it is not secured as the normal, 
 but as the necessary complement for what is already there. 
 And in that primary germ character which reveals itself in 
 the development of the individual, the quality of feeling is 
 but one part, as much dependent upon the rest as the rest 
 is upon it. 
 
 The inner identity of the germ and the somatic cell, the 
 identity of male and female, that of one somite with 
 
 o 
 
210 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 another, and the inner identity of the embryonic tissue of 
 regeneration with the specialised tissue which has been re- 
 moved these do not imply merely a manner of thinking 
 or anyone's opinion. It is a familiar and essential fact and 
 conception for all physiology and pathology, for zoology 
 and botany. These differents are not similar up to a 
 certain point or level, or identical in this and that par- 
 ticular, and then and separately different in those other 
 particulars or above that level. We have not to do with 
 animals or plants which are sexless in ninety-nine par- 
 ticulars (being identical in the sense of the absence of 
 difference), and are sexually diverse in one particular (being 
 different in the sense of the absence of identity). These, 
 and all such differents, are, in the ordinary experience of re- 
 search, wholly different and wholly identical. Nothing 
 could be more unlike a specialised organ than the small 
 round cells which regenerate it, yet we cannot express the 
 process of regeneration, even apart from hypothesis, other- 
 wise than by reference to an inner identity which is un- 
 affected by the most profound and obvious difference. 
 What, again, could be more absolutely removed from one 
 another, within the bounds of unicellular form, than ovum 
 and spermatozoid ; yet, again, what two cells could be 
 more absolutely identical ? If biology has anything to ex- 
 plain and to face, it is this unity, this identity in difference. 
 The reader's mind will probably recur at once, so fixed are 
 these empty habits, to some supposed chemical identity, or 
 identity of very fine structure which cannot be observed, or 
 identity of protoplasm in some unknown respect. But one 
 should succeed in eliminating all such half-formed meta- 
 phors from thought, otherwise it is impossible even to see 
 the problem. Now, as all other hypothetical forms for the 
 unity of the organism have broken down, so does this unity 
 of feeling break down and become inadequate for this 
 function. 
 
 Feeling serves very well to unite all the parts of the 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 211 
 
 body, and to secure purposeful reactions. An increasingly 
 strong case is being made out by research in favour of 
 giving it a high place as a factor of ontogeny. But it is 
 not present, as a whole, in each of the parts, or, at least, it 
 is not so present as for physiology. As the reactions of 
 germ and somatic cells, or of the two germ cells, are 
 different, so must their feeling in its quality and conditions 
 be different. The unity of feeling may very effectually 
 bring an isolated cell into a whole, which should direct its 
 parts in a purposeful manner, but it is difficult to see what 
 grounds we have for supposing that there is, present in the 
 isolated cell, the idea for the whole body as implied in a 
 particular quality of feeling. That is simply to say, that if 
 you give a physiological place to feeling, it ceases to serve 
 as the beginning out of which all the appearances come. 
 The " unconscious " of Hartmann, which, in so far as it is 
 applied to organic life, associates itself only with feeling, 
 can only do what it does in organic life because it is 
 apparently dissociated from conditions by a transparent and 
 contradictory shift. For, at the points at which it is 
 necessary that it should come in and it only thus enters 
 as a friend in need it takes the whole matter into its own 
 hands, and entirely supplants, but does not enter among, 
 the conditions in relation to which changes are ordinarily 
 explained. It is, in fact, the universal which comes in as 
 one particular interfering with other particulars in the same 
 scheme, and this is a method of explanation which we have 
 found reason to utterly condemn. 
 
 There is, however, one expression which is left to us for 
 the unity of the organism, but it does absolutely no more 
 than give us a fitting term with some suggestions of 
 analogy, and throws no light on the nature of the unity. 
 Character is the identity in difference of concrete indi- 
 viduals, and is the familiar expression for the whole of a 
 system. Though we have been unable to reduce all 
 qualities and parts to the position of functions of one 
 
212 PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY. 
 
 quality or part which should be the creature par excellence, 
 serving as the unity under the manifold, and as the per- 
 sistent through the changes, yet we can regard all the 
 particulars as manifestations and components of one 
 character. That character may develop itself in ontogeny, 
 but it does not change. It is the same in the simplicity of 
 the germ as in the complexity of the image. It is identical 
 under the differences of male and female. It is the common 
 nature, though no common quality, of germ and somatic 
 cell, and of the elements of the different tissues. Indi- 
 viduals which differ from one another, differ by one 
 difference, which, however, cannot be described except as 
 an infinite number of differences, and all the features of one 
 individual are one character. This is not the character of 
 the protoplasm, nor of the idioplasm, nor of the immanent 
 soul, but of the whole creature. And this character is no 
 cause or condition amongst others. It is an aspect of all, 
 and is that aspect by which all comes into unity. 
 
 Now, such a conception, it may be urged, is no con- 
 ception for an observational science. There would be more 
 reason in this objection than there is, if it were not that the 
 conception is shadowed forth in so many self-contradictory 
 forms such as those which we have studied. It has proved it- 
 self necessary to the science of biology by all the writings of 
 Spencer, and of Naegeli, and of Galton, and of many other 
 authors who might be named. We are forced to find some 
 expression for it. But apart from that fact of its universality 
 in the science, we may consider its necessity to a study 
 which deals only with individuals. When we say that such 
 and such qualities exist together in an individual, we are 
 pointing out, not their mere concurrence, but their identity. 
 The parts of an organised \vhole belong to its character. 
 And if we set out to build theories of the origin of qualities 
 in the growth of the individual, and of their existence by 
 reason of their significance to the individual, and especially 
 if we treat these qualities all together and in general, as the 
 
THE UNITY OF THE ORGANISM. 213 
 
 hypotheses do, it is obvious that the beginning and end of 
 our labour is to find just this expression for character. No 
 solution can be found by assuming, more or less arbitrarily, 
 that this or that feature is the character, and we do not 
 move a step forward by inventing unknowable agents to 
 represent it. The question therefore comes to be, what is 
 the character as distinguished from the characteristics ? 
 
 1 have set down this question, and studied the biological 
 answers to it, as clearly as I can. The further consideration 
 of it does not belong to this essay. For my present pur- 
 pose is served if the impulse, and the fallacy, and the 
 relation to research, of the biological systems, have become 
 at all apparent in the argument. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE END. 
 
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