EVOLUTION AND MENDELISM 223 



other way about. I ask you simply to open your minds to 

 this possibility. It involves a certain effort." 



Bateson considers that there is no evidence that changes 

 ever take place by the addition of factors, but that there is 

 satisfactory evidence that new forms have arisen by loss or 

 fractionisation of factors. " If then," he says, " we have to 

 dispense, as seems likely, with any addition from without, we 

 must begin seriously to consider whether the course of evolution 

 can at all reasonably be represented as an unpacking of an 

 original complex which contained within itself the whole range 

 of diversity which living things present." As an example of 

 this theory of unpacking he gives us the case of cultivated 

 apples. " When the vast range of form, size, and flavour to 

 be found among the cultivated apples is considered it seems 

 difficult to suppose that all this variety is hidden in the wild 

 crab-apple. I cannot positively assert that this is so, but I 

 think all familiar with Mendelian analysis would agree with 

 me that it is probable, and that the wild crab contains pre- 

 sumably inhibiting elements which the cultivated kinds have 

 lost." The factors for the new forms have apparently been 

 in the ancestors for countless generations, but kept down by 

 other factors and only released when these others are by some 

 agency removed. The fineness of merino wool, the multiplicity 

 of the quills in the tail of the fantail pigeon, the scents of 

 flowers and fruits are given as examples of releases of the 

 factors which produce these results. 



But still more startling is the statement with regard to the 

 artistic faculty. "I have confidence," he says, "that the 

 artistic gifts of mankind will prove to be due not to something 

 added to the make-up of the ordinary man, but to the absence 

 of factors which in the normal person inhibit the development 

 of these gifts. They are almost beyond question to be looked 

 upon as releases of powers normally suppressed." We have 

 been told that no organism can hand on any factor which it 

 did not itself receive in fertilisation, from which it necessarily 

 follows if no new factors can be added that the artistic factor 

 must have been present in man's ancestors — the anthropoid 

 ape, the labyrinthodont, and the fish. Perhaps it is the 

 presence of this artistic factor that accounts for the marvellous 

 beauty of the Radiolaria and many of the Foraminifera ! 

 The old belief in teleology which Prof. Bateson holds up to 



