CHAP. XL] AN EPISODE. 345 



to invoke an external agent in the one case and to reject it in 

 the other. 



Mr. Wright, however, as I have shown, invokes what is 

 innate in the case of organisms and rejects it in the 

 case of crystals and asserts that in organisms what Innate force 

 is innate is so predominant in its action that external con 

 ditions modify them very little. 



&quot; Passing over how important an admission this is against 

 any effective action of Natural Selection, let us see how it 

 tells against the analogy maintained. 



^ Is not the innate force, as existing in each organism, that 

 which has been educed by antecedent combinations and con 

 ditions, just as much and no more external to it than are the 

 forces of the medium to each atom of a crystal? And how 

 does this tell in the least against the analogy which has 

 been asserted, and which really does exist between each che 

 mical unit and each organic unit ? Not of course that it is 

 for a moment contended that there is not, as common ob 

 servation tells us there is, a distinct power and principle, 

 vitality, in the one which is wanting in the other, as well 

 as more or less complexity of organization. 



&quot;Again, we are told, as to organisms, external conditions 

 are, nevertheless, essential factors in development, as well as 

 in mere increase of growth. No animal or plant is developed, 

 nor do its developments acquire any growth, without very 

 special external conditions. Surely I hardly needed to be 

 solemnly informed of so very elementary a truth. 



&quot; Regarding the rules of the &amp;lt; inductive philosophy, Mr. 

 Wright remarks : 



A stricter observance of these by Mr. Murphy and our 

 author might have saved them from the mistake we have tive pS&quot; 

 noticed, and from many others the &quot; realism &quot; of ascribing s P h y-&quot; 

 efficacy to an abstraction, making attraction and polarity produce 

 structures and forms independently of the products and of the concrete 

 matters and forces in them. 



&quot;In whom, or in what? and what are attraction and 

 polarity, if they be not forces ? Who ever considered them 



