Eimer on Growth and Inheritance 



453 



imagine. But our feeling of ' motion ' is as purely and 

 simply a feeling, as is any other sensation or group of sensa- 

 tions. It is the omission to recognise the necessary presence 

 in every living being of a dynamic, immaterial principle of 

 individuation, not numerically separate from it, but forming 

 one substance with it, which renders Neo-Lamarckism, Neo- 

 Darwinism, and all the other popular views as to the organic 

 world, alike unsatisfactory and untenable. This is the truth 

 to which we have antecedently more than once referred, and 

 no healthy and sound biology is possible till it is recognised. 



Professor Eimer may indeed be logically compelled to 

 admit the existence of that immaterial, dynamic agency, the 

 necessary existence of which was plain to Aristotle, unless 

 he will forswear his own words. He affirms,^ in opposition 

 to Weismann, that — 



' the evolution of the characters of sense cells could not possibly have 

 been produced by sexual mixture and selection — by variation of the 

 germ cells — although I do not deny to the first two processes a share 

 in the accomplishment of the result. Not variation of the germ cells 

 which occurred by chance in a definite direction, but a definite capacity 

 of modification, . . . has determined this modification.' 



In fact, neither mere minute, accidental variations on the 

 one hand, nor the play of external forces on the other, can 

 of themselves give origin to definite organs. Let, however, 

 similar kinds of dynamic immaterial agency be present in 

 different organisms, and then we may expect to find similar 

 structures evolved in similar cases — we may expect to find 

 ' the independent origin of similar structures! 



And this is just what the Professor asserts ^ he does find. 

 AVorms and jelly-fishes are different animals indeed, and 

 neither can be said to be the parent of the other. But not 

 only are the auditory organs which have been evolved in the 

 two groups wonderfully alike, but those of some jelly-fishes 

 1 p. 336. - P. 337. 



