THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 301 



present in the initial phase of the system, it is evident 

 that the hypothesis implies that all the material 

 structure of the animal is present in the spatially ex- 

 tended form in the initial phase of the system. Just 

 as the adult animal is a manifoldness of material parts 

 and energies that possess extension, so also is the un- 

 differentiated embryo and its material environment an 

 extensive manifoldness. We cannot otherwise conceive 

 it if we are to retain the mechanistic view of the develop- 

 ment of the individual organism. 



Let us think of the process of organic evolution in 

 another way by comparing it with the mathematical 

 process by which we form the permutations and com- 

 binations of a number of different things. Individual 

 development is termed the assumption of a mosaic 

 structure, that is, all the parts of the adult are assumed 

 to be present in the embryo, but in a sort of " jumbled- 

 up ' ' condition. As development proceeds, these parts 

 become sorted out and arranged in a pattern which 

 continually becomes more and more distinct. Much 

 the same process of arrangement and segregation must 

 be assumed to have occurred during the process of 

 racial evolution : the parts of the ' primitive ' life- 

 substance, with all the parts of the physical environ- 

 ment which become incorporated with it during its 

 evolution, must have become segregated and arranged 

 so as to form the existing species of plants and animals. 

 A permutation, then, of the separate things a, b, c 

 x, y, z, is an arrangement of all these things : obviously 

 there are a very great number of ways in which the 

 letters of the alphabet may be arranged, Ijf in all. But 

 we may take some of the letters and arrange them in 

 different ways : the selections a, b, c, d, can be arranged 

 in [^ ways ; b, c, d, e, also in [^ ways, and so on. Thus 

 by a process of dissociation and arrangement of a certain 



