170 INORGANIC EVOLUTION. [CHAP. 



plastic at the time. The available matter then for this evolution 

 would be those gases plus those metals and those non-metals to which 

 I have referred. Now, supposing such an evolution, if the forms so 

 composed were to be multiplied indefinitely, the available material 

 would be used up and organic evolution would be brought just as 

 certainly to a dead-lock as the inorganic evolution was brought to 

 a dead-lock when there was no possibility of any considerable reduc- 

 tion of temperature. We should expect a tendency to growth 

 among the organic molecules, I dare not call it an inherited tendency, 

 but I feel almost inclined to do so, having the growth of crystals 

 in mind. If when these new organic forms had been produced, the 

 results instead of being stable were emphatically unstable, and still 

 better if a dissolution or the destruction of parts or wholes could be 

 induced, progress would always continue to be possible, and indeed 

 it might be accelerated.* 



The new organic molecules would ultimately not have the first 

 user of the chemical forms left available by the inorganic evolution, 

 but they would have the user of the gases and other substances pro- 

 duced by the dissolution of their predecessors. They would be 

 shoddy chemical forms, it is true, but shoddy forms would be better 

 than none. Under these circumstances and in this way, the organic 

 kingdom could go on ; in other words, the dissolution of parts or wholes 

 of the new organisms would not merely be an advantage to the race, but 

 might even be an essential condition for its continuance. 



It therefore looks very much as if we can really go back as far as 

 these very early stages of life on our planet to apply those lines of 

 Tennyson : 



" So careful of the type she seems, 

 So careless of the single life." 



* My friend and colleague, Professor Howes, has called my attention in this 

 connection to Professor Weismann's views (Welsmann on Heredity, vol. i, p. 112), 

 who seems to have arrived at somewhat similar conclusions though by a vastly 

 different road. He says, in his Essay on Life and Death, " In my opinion life 

 became limited in its duration not because it was contrary to its very nature to be 

 unlimited, but because an unlimited persistence of the individual would be a 

 luxury without a purpose." 



The general view I have put forward, however, suggests that perhaps it was not 

 so much a question of luxury for the living as one of necessity in order that others 

 might live ; it was a case of morsjanua mtae. 



The whole question turns upon the presence or absence, in all regions, of an 

 excess of the early chemical forms ready to be Used up in all necessary proportions. 

 Hence it may turn out that the difficulty was much greater for lard- than for sea- 

 forms, that is, that dissolution of parts or wholes of land-forms proceeded with 

 greater rapidity. It is a question of the possibility of continuous assimilation (see 

 Dantec, La Sexualite, p. 11), and the word "parks" which I have used refers to 

 the somatic cells, and not to the " immortal " part of living organisms. 



