274 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



origin of new lives and is not justified to the creature 

 until the offspring appear, so that it is only in 

 animals that have more than one set of offspring 

 that the organic testimony of the success of the ex- 

 periment could be transmitted. Many insects and 

 the like are annuals and die after parentage. With- 

 out shutting the door on what are called " mnemic " 

 theories, we are forced by the difficulties they in- 

 volve to the other main theory of the racial estab- 

 lishment of instinctive routine. On this view the 

 steps that count are made in the dark studio of the 

 germ-plasm. The germ-cell, an organism not in 

 miniature so much as in microcosm, is the real 

 inventor, the creative genius. We think too much, 

 perhaps, of the explicit individual, too little of the 

 implicit individuality the germ-cell. Not to be 

 thought of, we must remember, as like a white 

 blood corpuscle, but rather like a Proteus animalcule 

 that has been living on for millions of years, experi- 

 menting all the time and garnering the capacity of 

 repeating what was successful. It has withal the 

 power of including with its own experiments in self- 

 expression those of another germ-cell at the be- 

 ginning of each new life. The germ-cells are the 

 blind-artists of the realm of organisms, ever fashion- 

 ing some new germinal intricacy which finds ex- 

 pression in some novelty of structure or habit. 

 And on this view the individual, in which the germ- 

 cell's many inventions are expressed, embodied, and 

 exercised, may be thought of as the seeing artist, 

 beholding the work of the germ-cell and either 



