158 SYMDIOGENESIS 



The case of Mendelian alternatives would thus resolve 

 itself into one of subservience to the one great cause of pro- 

 gressive evolution, i.e., to the joint production of values a 

 view which is in harmony with the most modern conception of 

 the fertilisation process, both as a safeguard of racial purity 

 and as a means of progress through amphimixis. 



Speaking of man, Dr. Walker says: 



To me, therefore, it appears perfectly clear that the overwhelming 

 bulk of the characters inherited by every individual is derived from 

 very remote and prehuman ancestors. . . The characters common to 

 all individuals obviously cannot be transmitted alternatively. They are 

 always present. It is therefore evident that the characters that are 

 inherited in the Mendelian manner are really slight additions to or 

 subtractions from such characters already present. 



This, of course, would scarcely affect the argument that 

 originally everything depended on reciprocal differentiation, 

 on symbiogenetic methods. Sure it is that even that great 

 bulk of "characters," which have now become so fixed as no 

 longer to need this interplay of alternatives for their very 

 establishment, still depend for their maintenance and 

 permanence on due biological symbiosis with the pre-requisite 

 of proper domestic symbiosis. 



The racial acquisitions ancestral capital are so much 

 older and so much more powerful than recent individual addi- 

 tions, that we must expect the latter to be only slightly fixed, 

 and hence also more evanescent in their effects than ancestral 

 endowments. It is always the latest acquired endowments that 

 go first when degeneration supervenes. As Dr. Walker himself 

 tells us on another page: 



Of the whole stock of characters present in an individual then, the 

 great bulk has been derived from remote ancestors. This stock is con- 

 stantly being varied by what are comparatively small additions and 

 subtractions. Some of these are variations of the individual organism 

 and its private property (italics mine), so to speak. They may be 

 transmitted with increase or diminutions to the offspring. Thus it 

 becomes evident that a number of these smaller characters is inherited 

 from near ancestors. 



