ee ee le ler 
ae 
— 
IV 
_ THE PERPETUATION OF LIVING BEINGS, HEREDI- 
TARY TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION. 
THE inquiry which we undertook, at our last 
. meeting, into the state of our knowledge of the 
causes of the phenomena of organic nature,—of 
the past and of the present,—resolved itself into 
two subsidiary inquiries: the first was, whether we 
_ know anything, either historically or experimen- 
tally, of the mode of origin of living beings; the 
second subsidiary inquiry was, whether, granting 
_ the origin, we know anything about the perpetua- 
tion and modificationsof the formsof organic beings. 
| The reply which I had to give to the first question 
was altogether negative, and the chief result of my 
last lecture was, that, neither historically nor ex- 
perimentally, do we at present know anything 
_ whatsoever about the origin of living forms. We 
saw that, historically, we are not likely to know 
anything about it, although we may perhaps learn 
something experimentally ; but that at present we 
are an enormous distance from the goal I indicated. . 
