346 THE VARIATION OF ANIMALS IN NATURE 



morphoplastic responses. Russell makes use of the ' mnemic ' 

 principle that has been employed by various authors to explain 

 heredity, development and evolution, but he rejects Semon's 

 theory of material records or engrams (p. 131). 



(c) Smuts has put forward a theory of evolution which 

 seems to be ultimately derived from Lloyd Morgan, and, in 

 so far as it is the result of a revolt against nineteenth-century 

 science with its ' hard and narrow concept of causation,' 

 resembles that of Bergson in its philosophical background. 

 He attempts to show that there is in nature (inorganic as 

 well as organic) a dynamic creative energy which expresses 

 itself in progressively complex systems or ' wholes.' The 

 universe is a hierarchy of such systems, commencing (p. 106) 

 with the synthesis of parts in bodies of the order of chemical 

 compounds, and passing through plants and animals to Person- 

 ality and Absolute Values the activities of which result in 

 the creation of a spiritual world. The characteristic of the 

 whole in the organic world is the association of its parts in 

 the production of a functional unity. Evolution proceeds 

 primarily, not by selection, but by the progressive expansion 

 of the creative energy within the organism itself. Natural 

 Selection has but a subordinate role. Variations are not 

 selected on their individual merits. In their initial stages 

 they are helped out by the other parts of the whole, and selection 

 comes in only when the variation ' has developed enough to 

 add a sensible measure of strength to the parent organism.' 

 Smuts asks with commendable candour what experimental 

 verification there is for the holistic view of evolution. The 

 answer (p. 217) is that evolution is not a process that can be 

 repeated or verified by experiment [and, we must assume, by 

 observation of the individual organism living or dead]. ' A 

 correct view of evolution must be based on an intelligent 

 appreciation of the natural processes rather than on the very 

 limited data yielded by our laboratory experiments.' 



The outstanding merit of this theory, of which we have 

 given a very summary account, is that it recalls our attention 

 from the details of the process of evolution to its wider aspect. 

 The ' more or less stationary regime of casual character- 

 combinations ' (p. 183), which we see if we concentrate on 

 the details of the process, obscures the main issues and out- 

 come. The theory emphasises the unity of the organism and 



