xxvn] PERFORMANCE VERSUS PROMISE 335 



becoming, let us say, an artist, a bishop, or a stock-broker. But 

 we know that if he achieves any one of these aims in later life, 

 it will almost inevitably be at the expense of the power to arrive 

 at the other two. If, in the course of his ontogeny, the stock- 

 broker triumphs, we may regard him as built up upon the 

 ashes of the potential bishop and artist. The man, though 

 superior to the baby in actual achievement, is inferior to it in 

 the qualities which may be summed up in the word "promise," 

 just as the Angiosperm, though its degree of differentiation so 

 greatly exceeds that of the primordial protoplasmic speck, is 

 inferior to it when judged by its power to produce descendants 

 of widely varying types. 



