164 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



nor observation has succeeded in revealing so much as a single 

 exception to the universal law of genetic cellular continuity, and 

 the hypothesis of spontogenesis is outlawed, in consequence, by 

 the logic of scientific induction. Even the hope that future 

 research may bring about an amelioration of its present status 

 is entirely unwarranted in view of the manifest dynamic su- 

 periority of the living organism as compared with any of the 

 inert units of the inorganic world. ''Whatever position we 

 take on this question," says Edmund B. Wilson, in the con- 

 clusion of his work on the Cell, "the same difficulty is en- 

 countered; namely, the origin of that coordinated fitness, that 

 power of active adjustment between internal and external 

 relations, which, as so many eminent biological thinkers have 

 insisted, overshadows every manifestation of life. The nature 

 and origin of this power is the fundamental problem of biol- 

 ogy. When, after removing the lens of the eye in the larval 

 salamander, we see it restored in perfect and typical form 

 by regeneration from the posterior layer of the iris, we be- 

 hold an adaptive response to changed conditions of which 

 the organism can have no antecedent experience either onto- 

 genetic or phylogenetic, and one of so marvelous a char- 

 acter that we are made to realize, as by a flash how far we 

 still are from a solution of this problem." Then, after dis- 

 cussing the attempt of evolutionists to bridge the enormous 

 gap that separates living, from lifeless nature, he continues: 

 "But when all these admissions are made, and when the con- 

 serving action (sic) of natural selection is in the fullest de- 

 gree recognized, we cannot close our eyes to two facts: first, 

 that we are utterly ignorant of the manner in which the 

 idioplasm of the germ cell can so respond to the influence 

 of the environment as to call forth an adaptive variation; 

 and second, that the study of the cell has on the whole seemed 

 to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap that sepa- 

 rates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world." 

 ("The Cell," 2nd edit., pp. 433, 434.) 



