HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION 105 



history of conscious intelligence ? The scientific in 

 vestigations just sketched seem insufficient to reach 

 this life. The whole scope of that research is seen to 

 bear on organic action. If mental dispositions are 

 introduced, it is only in a casual way; the grand 

 problem of a rational life has not been definitely 

 placed in position. If we are referred to the proto 

 plasm of judgment and of predication, the protoplasm 

 is unknown, the functions have never been observed. 

 When, by process of fertilisation, a germ-cell is started 

 on the movement to issue in the mature structure 

 belonging to the species, this movement, as organic, 

 does not provide for anything beyond somatic life. If 

 more be claimed, it is necessary to demonstrate either 

 that reflection belongs to the functions of organ 

 ism; or that new conditions add to and transform 

 the human germ. Neither Darwin nor Weismann 

 faces the serious difficulty arising here. Either we 

 must hold that the egg from which the human in 

 dividual springs, exhausts the energy belonging to its 

 nucleus, in somatic results, as in the history of lower 

 organisms ; or, we must hold that the human egg, or 

 germ-cell, is somehow different in structure and func 

 tions from all other germ-cells, so as to provide for 

 rational life. Biological science is placed in peculiar 

 difficulty here. The whole tendency of scientific 

 thought is adverse to the latter hypothesis. The 

 success of the Evolution theory, as explaining origin 

 of species, has given additional force to this tendency. 

 The facts of our conscious life must supply the 

 ultimate test, just as the facts of natural history, in 

 the hands of Darwin and Wallace, have proved the 

 test of hypotheses as to the hereditary principle in 



