Active Causes of Organic Evolution 175 



If, in beginning our survey, we view plants and animals 

 simply as bodies which have evolved from inert ether particles 

 and active molding energy, w^hich are subject to the same 

 cosmic laws as other bodies around them, which now consist 

 largely of labile colloid substances of high complexity, and 

 which show a combined variety and delicacy of response that 

 places them in the most advanced or evolved rank amongst 

 such bodies, then, in virtue of the continuity relationship that 

 we have already accepted as clearly traceable, in passing from 

 the inorganic to the organic world, we should expect to find 

 similar agencies operating in the process of evolutionary unfold- 

 ing, though possibly becoming somewhat altered in degree 

 or in intensity, as we advance to increasingly complex bodies. 



(1) Heredity. In chapter I (p. 15) we referred to the 

 steady uniformity Tvath which the relatively few and simple 

 inorganic bodies preserve their molecular structure, and this, 

 for reasons that we consider fully warranted, we term their 

 heredity. This exact hereditary likeness of one crystal to 

 another of the same kind could only be altered by the inter- 

 change of so much energy, and the resulting addition or dis- 

 placement of one or more particles throughout the mineral. 

 Putting aside for the present the latter result, it is to the static 

 or hereditary condition that we will first attend. 



But at the outset the postulation of inorganic heredity might 

 raise the objection that heredity in inorganic and organic bodies 

 represents quite distinct phenomena, to wliich the same term 

 is inapplicable. This would be true were we to attempt ar- 

 bitrarily to limit the term heredity to transmission by sex- 

 cells of bi-parental peculiarities, as some have done. But, 

 were such an attempt made, we would be landed in the alike 

 illogical and unscientific position of ruling out heredity amongst 

 the primitive and asexual Acaryota. Yet these for long ages 

 have transmitted structures and functions hereditarily, that 

 gradually culminated in sexual difl'erentiation. We accept it 

 then as necessary that heredity existed amongst the Acaryota. 

 But these, in growing and multiplying, divided or budded off 

 parts of their cells, and each part separated as a new organism, 



