From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



almost say that it is the negation of transformism 

 itself.' 



He adds, * In fact, from a philosophical point 

 of view, transformism is the system which explains 

 the progressive and spontaneous appearance of mar- 

 vellously co-ordinated living mechanisms, such as 

 those of Man and the higher animals.' 



It will be seen in the sequel that the spontaneous 

 appearance of living beings is a philosophical impossi- 

 bility. The progressive appearance of such beings is in 

 no way traversed by the theory of mutations. 



It is only the hypothetical machinery, the supposed 

 genesis of progressive transformations, which is in 

 formal opposition to the new facts. 



Le Dantec, and the naturalists of his school who 

 identify transformism with its classical factors, are in 

 some measure logical when they seek to limit as much 

 as possible the area of mutations. But the evolutionary 

 idea itself has nothing to fear from the new discoveries ; 

 rather the contrary, as I shall endeavour to prove. 



Moreover, Le Dantec is almost alone in his opinion 

 when he affirms that mutations affect secondary, and 

 mainly ornamental, characteristics only, ' leaving the 

 hereditary patrimony intact.' 



Since the experiments by De Vries, very many new 

 observations have been published, and the palmary 

 importance of mutation is no longer denied, or indeed 

 deniable. 1 



The only question that remains is to ascertain whether 

 mutation is, in fact, the rule, or an exception. De Vries 

 states clearly that abrupt transformation is the rule, for 

 animals as for plants; and he may well be right. In 

 fact if the whole history of transformations on the 

 evolutionary scale is closely examined, it will be found 



1 Cf . Blaringhern, Les Transformations Brusques des Etres Vivants, 

 (Publ. Flammarion, Paris.) 



24 



