54 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



scale. The first modified forms are few and feeble and leave no 

 permanent record of their existence. The modifications required 

 to give them a firm foothold take place with rapidity and the inter- 

 mediate gradations are lost. The first evidence the investigator has 

 that a new departure has taken place is the appearance of the more 

 or less completely modified type, and it seems as though there had 

 been a fresh act of creation, or saltus. 



President Welling said he would like to have Mr. Bates ex- 

 plain the precise sense in which he used the term "discontinuity" 

 before conceding its necessity as an addition to scientific nomen- 

 clature. Without such explanation it would perhaps be held by 

 many that the facts and principles recited in the essay were suffici- 

 ently covered by that law of succession, differentiation, and inte- 

 gration which the reflective mind of man had spelled out from the 

 ongoings of nature. In these ongoings there had been constant 

 discontinuations as well of processes as of products, but no discoji- 

 tinuity. If any actual discontinuity must be admitted then the 

 whole doctrine of evolution, as commonly conceived, must fall to 

 the ground, for that doctrine proceeds on the assumption of per- 

 petual continuity amid perpetual discontinuations in natural pro- 

 cesses. These perpetual discontinuations do but mark out the line of 

 continuity along which nature has worked in the normal movement 

 and projection of her processes and products. Discontinuations are 

 matters of fact, but the principle which colligates them is continuity, 

 not discontinuity. 



In illustration of this point of view Mr. Welling then cited that 

 latest and most stupendous evolution of man in society, known as 

 international law. This law was built on the perpetual discontinu- 

 ation of customs, practices, and institutions dating from the most 

 primitive forms of social organization down to the present time, 

 but none the less had it been built without the slightest lesion of 

 continuity in the process of its evolution, for each successive differ- 

 entiation in social and national relations had only paved the way 

 for a new integration in thought and action. 



Prof. Thomas said that he agreed with Mr. Bates and Prof. Ward 

 in believing that the term "discontinuity" was properly applied 

 in speaking of some of the processes of nature. In following up 

 the line of progress in the development of animal life we observed 

 branches shooting out on either hand. For illustration, in passing 

 from the higher Annuloida, Huxley's Scolecida, we are led by one 



