226 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



Another image we might use is that of a river like 

 the Nile, flowing through countries which can yield 

 it no tributaries. The great river flows majestically 

 on, essentially the same as it was many hundreds of 

 miles up channel ; imparting life wherever it goes, 

 but receiving nothing. Such a river of life is " germ 

 plasm," flowing through the generations, yielding to 

 all of them support, but never affected by them. 



There is, however, a difference which our images 

 fail to bring out. On Weismann's view, evolutionary 

 change is always at work, acting through natural 

 selection. Permutations and combinations are always 

 being remodelled let us say, combinations of playing- 

 cards. The cards were originally dealt at the dawn 

 of animal and vegetable life ; and no fresh kind of 

 card has ever been introduced. Yet the " hands " 

 with which the game is played have, on the whole, 

 steadily improved from generation to generation, and 

 from age to age. How is that possible ? Because 

 these cards are alive. These cards multiply, aces 

 begetting aces, and kings begetting kings. Many 

 and many a hand has been torn up and flung away 

 in the process of natural selection ; and accordingly 

 the surviving hands have become very strong all 

 court cards, or trumps, or powerful sequences. 1 



At the back of this process of combinations we have 

 another the original dealing or the original making of 

 the cards. To what was that due ? To the Lamarckian 

 factor, to the direct action of environment, stamping 

 itself upon the isolated living cell. There is an absolute 

 contrast, it is assumed, between the two periods in 



1 I do not know if Weismann means this ; but it seems to lie in the 

 theory. Efficient begets efficient, as surely as non-efficient begets non- 

 efficient. Quantities seem capable of indefinite improvement, though 

 the theory admits of no fresh ultimate quality. 



