430 ORIGINATIVE FACTORS IN EVOLUTION: 



of their life to the study of the phenomena of variation 

 occasionally lapse from the stern path of science, and in face 

 of the difficulty of the problem ask themselves if they are 

 allowing enough for the fact that the organism is alive. 

 Thus we would quote from the recent work of Dr. R. R. 

 Gates on The Mutation Factor in Evolution this inter- 

 esting sentence : " Just as an Alpine climber dangling over 

 a chasm may, by changing his hold, swing himself on to 

 a shelf from which he can make a fresh start in some other 

 direction, so we may think of the organism trying many un- 

 conscious experiments in its offspring, some of which are 

 hurled by the gravitational effect of natural selection into 

 the abyss of extinction while others with a more fortunate 

 turn rest on a ledge of safety whence new essays of variability 

 begin." But Dr. Gates mutationist all too speedily takes the 

 place of Dr. Gates psycho-biologist. After this one exciting 

 glimpse of the organism as climber we are hurried back to 

 the chemical and physical complexity of the protoplasm 

 and its unique irritability and retentiveness. But we are 

 disposed to linger over the idea of the organism as climber, 

 and the organism here means the germ-cell. It is not sug- 

 gested that the germ-cell is dominated by any purpose of 

 getting to the top of anything, or of circumventing any par- 

 ticular difficulty, but rather that there is inseparable from 

 it a restless experimenting in self-expression, bearing the 

 same relation to the insurgent self-assertiveness of the full- 

 grown creature that the tentatives of dreamland bear to 

 the achievements of open-eyed and deliberate endeavour. 



The position we are suggesting is that the larger muta- 

 tions, the big novelties, are expressions of the whole or- 

 ganism in its germ-cell phase of being, comparable to experi- 

 ments in practical life, solutions of problems in intellectual 



