A DYNAMICAL HYPOTHESIS OF INHERITANCE. 27 



tinuous "moving equilibrium" by external agencies, to borrow 

 a phrase of Mr. Spencer's. 



This view, it will be seen, leads to a determinism as absolute 

 as that of the Neo-Darwinists, but upon a wholly different 

 basis. It leads to the denial of the direct mutability of the 

 germ by any means other than the transformation, chemical 

 and structural, through metabolism, of the germinal mechan- 

 ism. It not only compels us to deny that the germ can be at 

 once so affected by external blows as to transmit changes thus 

 produced hereditarily except under exceptional conditions, as 

 we shall see later. It denies also, by implication, that the 

 cytoplasm can be so modified, except indirectly, or through 

 architectural transformations of its ultramicroscopic structure. 



It is also compelled to deny that spontaneous or autogenous 

 characters can either arise or be transmitted without involving 

 the principle of the conservation or correlation of force, since 

 no transformation of such a mechanism can take place without 

 involving forces directly or indirectly exerted by the external 

 world. In short, the energy displayed by a living molecular 

 system from within must be affected by energies coming upon 

 it from without. All characters whatsoever were so acquired, 

 so that the truth is that there are no others to be considered. 

 Characters acquired through the interaction of inner and outer 

 forces are the only ones possible of acquirement. 



That through reciprocal integration (fertilization and for- 

 mation of an oosperm) this rule may have apparent exceptions, 

 through the compounding of two molecular mechanisms of 

 different strengths, dynamically considered, it is impossible 

 to deny in the face of the evidence of breeders. Such ex- 

 ceptions are apparent, however, and not real, as must follow 

 from dynamical theory. 



The sorting process, called natural selection, is itself dy- 

 namic, and simply expresses the fact that, by an actual opera- 

 tion with a living body of a certain kind, something more 

 than a balancing of forces is involved between internal and 

 external energies whenever a survival occurs. The principles 

 of dynamics therefore apply in all strictness to natural selec- 

 tion. 



