CHAP, xvin A "FAIRY TALE OF SCIENCE" ? 227 



the history of life. In the first, variations were due 

 directly to the environment, not at all to natural 

 selection, 1 which only acts upon variations submitted 

 to it by sexual reproduction. In other words, environ- 

 ment may be called the judge in natural selection, but 

 there is no need of environment as a judge when it is 

 itself the maker of the things to be judged. If it is the 

 maker, it gives a guarantee along with its goods. If 

 or so far as Lamarckism is true, Darwinism, with its 

 "natural selection," becomes secondary if not superflu- 

 ous, ranking at best as an auxiliary and accelerating 

 force. Thus, if the unicellular organism bears the stamp 

 of environment, it has directly adjusted itself to the con- 

 ditions of life ; it is already certified as "fit to survive." 

 But, in the second great period, we are to believe that 

 environment is helpless and natural selection omnipotent. 

 This is less arbitrary than it seems. In the unicellular 

 age the living creature is all surface, and, as it were, 

 at the mercy of environment. But in the multicellular 

 age the really vital matter, the " germ plasm," is sup- 

 posed to be carefully hidden away inside a body and out 

 of reach hidden within a body and even (the theory 

 says) independent of its vicissitudes, so long as the body 

 lives. The only way in which nature can now affect 

 germ plasm is by killing off the body in which it 

 resides, under sentence of " unfitness." Thus in- 

 directly natural selection is always indirect and 

 slowly indirect processes of course are slow evolution 

 is pushed on. For in this fashion germ plasm is 

 progressively improved ; and unicelullar embryos, need- 

 ing nothing from the mother beyond nourishment 2 up 



1 So Weismann as stated by Romanes. 



2 Heredity is equal from the two parents. It seems therefore that 

 Weismannism must be right in denying that the fretus draws anything 

 beyond nourishment from the mother organism. 



