H. SPENCER'S HYPOTHESIS 65 



and therefore, if the Lamarckian hypothesis be true, are differently 

 recorded in the germ-cells. 



100. How did this amazing power arise ? What is the 

 machinery for it? If we exclude miracle, the only conceivable 

 causal agent is Natural Selection at any rate I can conceive no 

 other, and I do not believe the reader can. But Natural Selection 

 is concerned only in shaping adaptations. It must be shown, 

 therefore, that this power of transmuting acquirements is generally 

 useful to species ; for it is inconceivable that Natural Selection 

 would or could call into existence so wonderful and complex a 

 power if the result injured the race and stultified itself. Obviously 

 it must not be assumed, as is always done by the adherents of 

 Lamarck, that the existence of this power is ' natural ' and inevit- 

 able so natural and inevitable that it is necessary rather to 

 disprove than to prove the actuality of the transmission. 



101. It is argued sometimes that the multicellular individual is 

 not really multicellular ; but that protoplasmic bridges connect 

 the cells and convert the whole into a sort of gigantic unicellular 

 organism. Presumably, on similar grounds, we should regard 

 Siamese twins, not as two individuals, but as one. But, even if we 

 agree that the multicellular is really unicellular, the difficulties to 

 be surmounted by the Lamarckian theorist are not diminished. It 

 still remains true that the parts of the child are not derived from 

 similar parts of the parent, but, on the contrary, from a minute 

 portion of him (the germ-cell). We gain nothing by calling this 

 portion a portion instead of a separate cell ; for it is just as hard to 

 understand how this portion can be influenced with percision in 

 millions of definite different directions by changes occurring else- 

 where. Herbert Spencer sought to overcome the difficulty by 

 conceiving the living body as a kind of crystal, the nature of which 

 was liable to be so radically changed by the action of the environ- 

 ment that detached portions of it tended to assume the new, not 

 the old shape. A chip from a crystal, it is true, grows in a 

 suitable medium into the likeness of the parent crystal ; but there 

 the analogy ends. The crystal does not spontaneously emit 

 portions of itself that serve as starting-points for daughter crystals, 

 which vary from the parent. It is not heterogeneous in structure. 

 It is not a storehouse of active energy. It does not alter pro- 

 foundly and continuously in shape during growth as the embryo 

 does, nor with the seasons like plants or the stag when he sheds 

 his antlers, nor from moment to moment like a man when he moves. 

 It does not consist of a fluctuating stream of matter which enters 



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