THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



of the appearance of such gifted individuals. The ap- 

 pearance of these superior men is startlingly sudden 

 and unexpected : we cannot predict when or in what 

 field of endeavour they will appear; we cannot find 

 in their ancestry the qualities which would make it 

 probable that it would produce a genius ; we cannot 

 tell whether the ideas of the genius will bear fruit or 

 will prove to be sterile. 



The influence of the individual on the progress of 

 society is closely analogous to the present "mutation" 

 theory of biological evolution. The biologists have 

 been compelled to give up general laws and general 

 causes for the variation of species, and are pretty well 

 convinced that it is due to the sudden and unexpected 

 variations in individuals. For example, if a large 

 number of seeds from a single plant are grown, each 

 will have certain characteristic differences from the 

 others, and a new species is due to the true breeding 

 of such individual abrupt changes. Such a cause can- 

 not evidently be classed as a general law since it de- 

 pends on individual idiosyncrasies rather than on 

 common qualities. We can admit the fact of varia- 

 tion by such a cause ; as I before remarked, a reptile 

 may have laid and hatched an egg which turned out 

 to be a feathered bird. But such an admission, while 

 it may close the palaeontological gap between rep- 

 tiles and birds, is quite contrary to the purpose of a 

 scientific hypothesis. So, too, if sociological variations 

 are due to the sudden and unexpected variations in a 



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