THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS. 455 



that organic evolution proceeds after this manner. For 

 since it is proved that no germ, animal or vegetal, contains 

 the slightest rudiment, trace, or indication of the future or- 

 ganism — since the microscope has shown us that the first 

 process set up in every fertilized germ is a process of repeat- 

 ed spontaneous fissions, ending in the production of a mass 

 of cells, not one of which exhibits any special character; 

 there seems no alternative but to conclude that the partial 

 organization at any moment subsisting in a growing embryo, 

 is transformed by the agencies acting on it into the succeed- 

 ing phase of organization, and this into the next, until, 

 through ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is 

 reached. Thus, though the subtlety of the forces and 



the slowness of the metamorphosis, prevent us from directly 

 tracing the genesis of many changes by one cause, through- 

 out the successive stages which every embryo passes 

 through; yet, indirectly, we have strong evidence that this 

 is a source of increasing heterogeneity. We have marked 

 how multitudinous are the effects which a single agency 

 may generate in an adult organism; that a like multiplica- 

 tion of effects must happen in the unfolding organism, we 

 have inferred from sundry illustrative cases; further, it has 

 been pointed out that the ability which like germs have to 

 originate unlike forms, implies that the successive transfor- 

 mations result from the new changes superinduced on pre- 

 vious changes; and we have seen that structureless as every 

 germ originally is, the development of an organism out of it 

 is otherwise incomprehensible. Doubtless we are still in 

 the dark respecting those mysterious properties which make 

 the germ, when subject to fit influences, undergo the special 

 changes beginning this series of transformations. All here 

 contended is, that given a germ possessing these mysterious 

 properties, the evolution of an organism from it depends, 

 in part, on that multiplication of effects which we have seen 

 to be a cause of evolution in general, so far as we have yet 

 traced it. 



