254 LIFE AND HABIT. 



tendency towards progressive development in every 

 low organism. He was thus driven to account for the 

 presence of many very low and very ancient organisms 

 at the present day, and fell back upon the theory, which 

 is not yet supported by evidence, that such low forms 

 are still continually coming into existence from inorganic 

 matter. But there seems no necessity to suppose that 

 all low forms should possess an inherent tendency 

 towards progression. It would be enough that there 

 should occasionally arise somewhat more gifted speci- 

 mens of one or more original forms. These would 

 vary, and the ball would be thus set rolling, while 

 the less gifted would remain in statu quo, provided 

 they were sufficiently gifted to escape extinction. 



Nor do I gather that Lamarck insisted on continued 

 personality and memory so as to account for heredity at 

 all, and so as to see life as a single, or as at any rate, 

 only a few, vast compound animals, but without the 

 connecting organism between each component item in 

 the whole creature, which is found in animals that are 

 strictly called compound. Until continued personality 

 and memory are connected with the idea of heredity, 

 heredity of any kind is little more than a term for some- 

 thing which one does not understand. But there seems 

 little a priori difficulty as regards Lamarck's main idea, 

 now that Mr. Darwin has familiarised us with evolu- 

 tion, and made us feel what a vast array of facts can 

 be brought forward in support of it. 



Mr. Darwin tells us, in the preface to his last edition 

 of the " Origin of Species," that Lamarck was partly 

 led to his conclusions by the analogy of domestic pro- 



