VARIATION 431 



life, or creations in artistic life. These are accomplished, 

 every one knows, by molecular activities in the brain and 

 body, but they are not intelligibly thought of unless we 

 conceive of the organism as a psycho-physical individuality, 

 a mind-body, or body-mind, as we will. Similarly it may be 

 that our conception of germinal variability is falsely abstract 

 unless we recognise that germ-cells are living individualities 

 of great complexity telescoped-down into a one-celled phase 

 of beings, and that they too make essays in self-expression. 



Mr. E. S. Russell (1915, p. 430) has suggested that non- 

 adaptive specific differences which make species discontinu- 

 ous may be profitably compared to the differences between 

 related organic compounds, and that they may be due to 

 differences in metabolism or stereochemic architecture which 

 cannot be other than discontinuous. But adaptive specific 

 characters, whether of internal or external reference, may be 

 the result in the long run of some " obscurely psychic capac- 

 ity for active effort ". " The analogies between intelligent 

 and instinctive behaviour on the one hand and the organic 

 processes of active adaptation on the other, as these are ex- 

 pressed in changes of form, are striking and profound." 

 Mr. Russell goes on to say that behaviour and morphogene- 

 sis are probably different manifestations of one and the 

 same fundamental capacity which cannot be formulated ade- 

 quately without using psychical terms. 



If it be said that this is retrograde science to fall back 

 on psychical formulation because of the baffling difficulty 

 of physiological formulation, and that it is a reversion to the 

 mediaeval solution of the problem of digestion and the like 

 by calling in the aid of Archegaeus and other indwelling 

 spirits. But it may be answered first, that in giving an 

 account of our own behaviour it is not a hypothesis to re- 



