90 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



Let us therefore indicate in a word or two the posi 

 tive contribution that each of the three present forms 

 of evolutionism seems to us to make toward the 

 solution of the problem, what each of them leaves out, 

 and on what point this threefold effort should, in our 

 opinion, converge in order to obtain a more compre 

 hensive, although thereby of necessity a less definite, 

 idea of the evolutionary process. 



The neo-Darwinians are probably right, we believe, 

 when they teach that the essential causes of variation 

 are the differences inherent in the germ borne by the 

 individual, and not the experiences or behaviour of 

 the individual in the course of his career. Where we 

 fail to follow these biologists, is in regarding the 

 differences inherent in the germ as purely accidental 

 and individual. We cannot help believing that these 

 differences are the development of an impulsion which 

 passes from germ to germ across the individuals, that 

 they are therefore not pure accidents, and that they 

 might well appear at the same time, in the same form, 

 in all the representatives of the same species, or at least 

 in a certain number of them. Already, in fact, the 

 theory of mutations is modifying Darwinism profoundly 

 on this point. It asserts that at a given moment, after 

 a long period, the entire species is beset with a tendency 

 to change. The tendency to change, therefore, is not 

 accidental. True, the change itself would be accidental, 

 since the mutation works, according to De Vries, in 

 different directions in the different representatives of 

 the species. But, first we must see if the theory is 

 confirmed by many other vegetable species (De Vries 

 has verified it only by the Oenothera Lamarckiand)? 



1 Some analogous facts, however, have been noted, all in the vegetable 

 world. See Blaringhem, &quot; La Notion d espece et la th^orie de la mutation &quot; 



