GENETICS 131 



such an organism has earned for itself and reaps a harvest of 

 needed and fructifying services and stimulations, a persistence 

 of force accruing from the complex interactions and integra- 

 tions of the web of life. Though rate of progress among the 

 strenuous types be thus relatively slow, it is sure and always 

 results in rise of status in the end, and it is these types that 

 are seen to be growing still upwards, whilst degenerates and 

 "hasty climbers" have, in many cases, reached an untimely 

 end. Man is one of the slowest breeders among animals, but 

 his "breeds" in the end have remained superior and are the 

 most progressive to boot. Surely this is connected with values ! 

 In this sense it is true also that Natura non facit saltum. 



Darwin's references to the simultaneous changes of 

 organisms is true in the purely chronological sense so long as 

 we make the necessary qualitative distinctions. The grains 

 changed simultaneously as other grains changed, and the chaff 

 n o the chaff, but grain and chaff changed in different direc- 

 tions, and with widely different ultimate results. It is curious 

 in this connection to note that Darwin clearly perceived that 

 terrestrial organisms, because of the more complex (partly 

 economic) relations of their organic and inorganic conditions 

 of life, enjoy a quicker rate of change than aquatic organisms, 

 which is another adumbration of the bio-economic view. Failing 

 a recognition of the bio-economic and symbiogenetic view, we 

 find him disconsolately exclaiming in a letter to Hooker: 

 " The rapid development, so far as we can judge, of all the 

 higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable 

 mystery." 



It is now manifest that the data generally adduced as 

 regards geological time required by the evolutionary process, in 

 the absence of a proper biological analysis, must remain highly 

 problematical. Evidence thereof we have in a recent article 

 by Mr. H. S. Shelton in Science Progress, October, 1913. He 

 states : " Vague as are the data of the geologist, those of the 

 biologist are still more uncertain," and he demurs to Prof. 

 Poulton's inference that pre-Cambrian evolution must have 



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