FOSSIL PEDIGREES 69 



the process by which living forms were continued upon earth, 

 the univocal reproductive process upheld by fixism is more 

 manifestly a natural process than the gradually-equivocal 

 generation of variable inheritance hypothecated by the theory 

 of transmutation. The sole matter of dispute between the 

 two views is whether the life-cycles of organisms are circles 

 or spirals. 



But all this, it will be said, is purely negative. Merely to 

 refrain from any recourse to the extraordinary or the super- 

 natural is by no means sufficient. ''Natural explanations" 

 must be explanatory as well as natural. Unless there be a 

 simplification, a reduction of plurality to unity, a resolution 

 of many particular problems into a common general problem, 

 we have no explanation worthy of the name. Granting, there- 

 fore, that uniformitarian fixism does not recur to the an- 

 omalous or the miraculous, it still lies open to the charge of 

 failing in its function as an explanation, because it multiplies 

 origins in both space and time. Transformism, on the contrary, 

 is said to elucidate matters, inasmuch as it unifies origins spa- 

 tially and temporally. 



That transformism successfully plausibleizes a unification 

 of origins in space, is true only in a limited and relative sense. 

 The most that can be said for the assumption, that resem- 

 blances rest on the principle of common inheritance, is that 

 it permits of a numerical reduction of origins, but this nu- 

 merical reduction will, by an intrinsic necessity, always fall 

 short of absolute unification. The monophyletic derivation of 

 all organic forms from one primordial cell or protoblast is a 

 fantastic dream, for which, from the very nature of things, 

 natural science does not, and can not, furnish even the sem- 

 blance of an objective basis. The ground is cut from under 

 our feet, the moment we attempt to extend the principle of 

 descent outside the limits of an organic phylum. The sole 

 basis of inference is a group of uniformities, and, unless these 

 uniformities predominate over the diversities, there can be no 

 rational application of the principle of transformism. Hence, 



