366 THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 



something which divides and persists. Thus arises what 

 Prof. E. B. Wilson calls the puzzle of the microcosm : " Is 

 the hen's egg fundamentally as complex as the hen, and is 

 development merely the transformation of one kind of com- 

 plexity into another " \ 



We can picture a conjurer's box full of exquisite wound-up 

 contrivances which begin to unwind and expand one after 

 the other when the lid is opened. As the springs uncoil an 

 extraordinarily complex mass is formed which half fills the 

 stage. But there is no real increase in complexity, even if 

 the springs interlace. For a tangled skein is not more complex 

 than an ordered one. Now, development is much more than 

 this uncoiling of springs set agoing by opening the lid 

 of a box, for each cell into which the egg-cell divides is a 

 living unit and is able to relate itself in an organic way to 

 its neighbours, so that the final result is a dynamic system 

 an active organisation far more complex than the original 

 egg-cell. 



What holds in the development of the microcosm is true 

 also in the evolution of the macrocosm. The descendants 

 are really more complex than the primordial ancestors, for 

 the process has meant a multiplication of genuine individu- 

 alities or agents, who relate themselves to one another or- 

 ganically, who enter into subtle inter-relations with their 

 inanimate environment, whence also new complexities spring. 



A number of immigrants on a prospecting voyage take 

 possession of an island and in the course of centuries a 

 great nation is built up. All the human material in that 

 nation has arisen from what was in the ship, but it out- 

 rages common sense to maintain that the end is not more 

 complex than the beginning, for that is to deny to men 

 and women any creative agency, to pretend that inter-rela- 



