How Darwinism Stands To-Day JJG9 



the raw materials provided, and determine survival? In other 

 words: what are the originative factors, what are the laws of 

 entail, and what are the directive or sifting factors? 



Evolution depends on new departures, peculiarities, idio- 

 syncrasies, divergences, freaks, sports, a little more of this, a 

 little less of that in short, organic or constitutional changes. 

 These are technically called variations and mutations. In other 

 words, evolution whether progressive or retrogressive depends 

 on the emergence of novelties. When there are no novelties there 

 can be no evolution. The Lamp-shell, Lingula, seems to have 

 remained stagnant for many millions of years a fine creature, 

 but icily perfect. 



Heredity is the relation of organic continuity between suc- 

 cessive generations, the living on of the past in the present, the 

 flesh and blood linkage between an individual and his forbears 

 on the one hand, his offspring on the other. The individual is 

 like a lens into which rays from parentage and ancestry con- 

 verge, from which they diverge again to the progeny. 



Heredity is the reproductive relation which secures that like 

 tends to beget like, and yet seldom does. Some peculiarities of 

 an individual are heritable, others are not; longevity is readily 

 entailed, but genius is not; deaf-mutism is very transmissible, 

 but a very brown Anglo-Indian father has a peach-blossom com- 

 plexioned daughter. Thus, if we think early, we see that 

 heredity is not so much a factor in evolution as a condition. 

 There would still be heredity though evolution stopped ; but there 

 can be no evolution without heredity. For heredity implies that 

 the gains of the past can be capitalised; and, contrariwise, that 

 individual losses need not involve racial bankruptcy. A man who 

 has lost an eye may be assured that his son will have two, even 

 if the mother is single-eyed as well. 



What are called variations and mutations in biological lan- 

 guage are the organism's experiment in self-expression, and these 

 are the raw materials of progress. Granted raw materials, and 



