Qcneralions, Mefainorphosis^ c&cj. 43 



of autliors liavc not known how to (lc;il correctly. Brandes 

 alono, in liis new edition f)f Lcuckart^s work on ' Parasites/ 

 speaks on one occasion of a " masked " alternation ot" genera- 

 tions ; but otherwise such intermediate stages are always 

 intcr|3reted as "commencing''^ alternation of generations, 

 liut still it is by no means quite clear how such a view can 

 be taken. There certainly can be no question of orthogeny, 

 and, on the other hand, neither can any value whatever be 

 attributed to such "beginnings^' from the i)oint of view of 

 selection. Thus it is consequently in all probability more 

 correct to regard them simply as purposeless remnants, and 

 so to consider them as we do the rudimentary organs, which, 

 indeed, were equally conundrums before Darwin's time. In 

 the embryological works of the last few years will be found 

 the description of many a phenomenon which from this point 

 of view would be much more readily intelligible. 



The regenerative faculty, too, is thus perhaps capable of 

 being interpreted simply as the rudiment of an earlier asexual 

 mode of reproduction. The ability to produce from their 

 asexual cell-material a new and distinct individual has gradually 

 been lost by the higher animals (and this is how I account 

 for metamorphosis also) ; but at least they have still retained 

 the power of continually bringing the old individual up to its 

 normal condition. This, then, probably also explains why it 

 is precisely organisms with undiminished asexual reproduc- 

 tion (thus^ the plants in an especial degree) that do not 

 regenerate ; and hyper-regeneration, too, is surely easy to 

 understand when we regard it as a more powerful remnant of 

 an earlier asexual reproduction. 



It may be tiiat thoughts like these^have already occurred 

 to one naturalist or another, and that it was only Tunicates, 

 Insects, &c., that hitherto have always led to their being 

 abandoned again. On that account I have already dealt with 

 this main objection in the present paper, while I must defer 

 the further development of my theory in fuller detail until 

 somewhat later, in connexion with my thesis on partheno- 

 genesis and arbitrary determination of sex in the higher 

 animals. For it all hangs together, one thing follows from 

 the other, and everything rests upon a mutual basis. The 

 entire development of the organic world is to my mind a 

 purely orthogenetic ])rocess, consisting in continually ad- 

 vancing "sexual dissociation'" of the primitively latent- 

 hermaphrodite (so-called asexual) original condition. Without 

 such a "sexuality'' of the organic world, a natural force, 

 therefore, which has hitherto been disregarded, we shall, in 

 my opinion, be unable to furnish a complete explanation of 



