io6 VARIABILITY 



spontaneous ; (c) the development of the multicellular organism 

 is a recapitulation however inaccurate and incomplete of the 

 evolution of the race. All these three characters, insusceptibility, 

 regulated variability, and recapitulation are due to Natural Selec- 

 tion or miracle. If the reader, bearing in mind the whole of 

 the evidence, not merely isolated items, will think the matter out 

 carefully, I believe he will find there is no escape from the 

 conclusion that all species must possess the first two characters or 

 perish, and that the third also must be present in all multicellular 

 types. He will be driven to conclude, also, that they are not 

 mere chance characters, but products of evolution which Natural 

 Selection wonderfully and beautifully regulates, which form the 

 foundation of all other adaptations, and are, therefore, the most 

 universal and important of all of them. The non-recognition of 

 them as adaptations, necessary and inevitable adaptations, which 

 underlies so much of modern thought and research, attests better 

 than anything else the failure, fatal to a right comprehension of 

 life, to realize that all normal living beings are, speaking practically, 

 nothing other than bundles of adaptations. 



