CHAP, xvni A "FAIRY TALE OF SCIENCE " f 225 



life is constituted by fertilisation. And therefore 

 " ontogeny " briefly recapitulates " phylogeny," the in- 

 dividual organism passing rapidly through the stages 

 by which evolutionists hold that the species has grown 

 to be what it now is. The multicellular or higher 

 organisms are only, as it were, loose appendages to cer- 

 tain peculiarly qualified unicellular organisms, like great 

 flickering shadows of dwarfs or little children cast by a 

 bonfire. The higher organisms perpetuate themselves 

 qua unicellular. They may seem bicellular, because of 

 the curious sexual split into male and female ; but we 

 must remember that ovum and spermatozoon combine 

 in one to form a new life-history. And all the future 

 of the individual life lies in nuce in that single cell. 

 And we can further trace this determination of the 

 qualities of maturity by the qualities of the embryo 

 right back through the continuous germ plasm to an 

 age when the whole world of organisms was unicellular. 

 No fresh quality has come to any living creature since 

 life began its ascent. All were implicitly present in 

 the unicellular world ; all have been slowly evolved and 

 improved by nature's gigantic game of permutations 

 and combinations. She has written out by degrees every 

 possible grouping of the qualities of protoplasm, and has 

 drawn her pen remorselessly through the inefficient ones. 

 The favourite image or parable for this view of heredity 

 given, e.g., by Huxley in the notes to his Romanes 

 lecture is that of a plant propagating itself by suckers. 

 Root grows from root; every here and there the root 

 sends upwards a perfect plant, a glory of leaves, flowers, 

 fruit ; in the absence of these the root could not be 

 healthy; yet plant is never derived from plant, and 

 still less is root derived from plant ; every root is 

 derived from root ; every plant is derived from root. 



Q 



