234 APPENDICES 



9 A System of Logic, p. 427. 



10 Ibid.y pp. 429-433. 



11 Op. cit.j p. 124. Cf. our Chapter II, p. 20, where tliis idea is given an 

 Hegelian formulation. 



12 Ibid., p. 366. 



13 Ibid., p. 154. Consider, on this subject, the concluding paragraphs of 

 D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's classic biological treatise. On Growth and Form 

 (Macmillan, 1948): 'A "principle of discontinuity", then, is inherent in all 

 our classifications, whether mathematical, physical, or biological; and the 

 infinitude of possible forms, always limited, may be further reduced and dis- 

 continuity further revealed by imposing conditions — As, for example, that our 

 parameters must be whole numbers, or proceed by quanta, as the physicists say. 

 The lines of the spectrum, the six families of crystals, Dalton's atomic law, 

 the chemical elements themselves, all illustrate this principle of discontinuity. 

 In short, nature proceeds from one type to another among organic as well as 

 inorganic forms; and these types vary according to their own parameters, and 

 are defined by physico-mathematical conditions of possibility. In natural 

 history Cuvier's "types" may not be perfectly chosen nor numerous enough, but 

 types they are: and to seek for stepping-stones across the gaps between them is 

 to seek in vain, for ever. 



'This is no argument against the theory of evolutionary descent. . . .' 

 (p. 1094). 



Recognition of types does not deny the possibilities of transformation and 

 even 'creation', but sets rough limits to those possibilities. In the laboratory, 

 man may, in a sense, create new elements out of combinations of the old, just as 

 he has already learned to induce limited biological mutations; but probably he 

 is thus merely hastening a natural process, actualizing a potentiality which was 

 nature's own. 



