" CONTRE-EVOLUTION " 183 



But Dr. Larger is still far too exclusively " teratologiste," and 

 his endeavour to fall into line with, or even to improve upon, 

 "la maniere large " "de concevoir la Degenerescence, maniere 

 inauguree par Charles Fere," must still be pronounced a failure. 

 What on special occasions he has to say of the solidarity of the 

 organs and the resulting possibilities of pathological correlations, 

 must be extended, mutatis mutandis, to the idea of the solidarity 

 of all life. Neither can it be overlooked that the degeneration 

 of the higher organisms presents a case of a corruptio optimi 

 pessima, 



I quote, not without sympathy, the author's further remark : 



Je discerne deja ce reproche que j'ai souvent entendu resonner a mes 

 oreilies : " Mais alors tout le monde est degen6r6 ! " Mais parfaitement ! 

 Dans les races trop civilisees du moins, ou trop specialisees, comme on dit 

 en Paleontologie peu de families, en effet, sont absolument normales. 

 Et plus ces families sont cultivees et plus elles comptent de degeneres ! 

 Et voila pourquoi, etant touted plus ou moins " predisposes," elles finissent 

 par disparaitre pour faire place a des Races indemnes de Digevirescence. 

 N'est-ce pas ce que 1'Histoire, d'une part, et la Paleontologie, de Tautre, 

 demontrent de la maniere la plus incontestable ? 



There existed a fair consensus of opinion amongst ancient 

 philosophers that the chief cause of the decline of races was 

 excess : 



Multo plures satietas quam fames perdidit viros. 



And this, in my opinion, is fully borne out by the study of 

 Biology, as also of Palaeontology. Whilst predisposition, with 

 me, begins with a divorce from Symbiosis, with Dr. Larger it 

 begins only when such divorce has, after ages it may be, produced 

 grave anatomical blemishes. I wonder whence, in his opinion, 

 spring the " races indemnes de Degenerescence," and what, 

 according to him, would have to be the qualification of a pro- 

 genitor fertile in normal offspring ? The mere absence of 

 " stigmates," surely, is not enough, and tells us very little about 

 the physiological qualifications required. Nor is it enough to 

 say that : la plasticite s'accuse progressivement en remontant 

 vers 1'origine du phylum." What we want to know is this : 

 wherein consists normal specialisation ? The question why the 

 puny mammalia have scarcely degenerated, involves the author 

 with his axiom that " tout degdnere dans la nature " in some 

 difficulties. He thinks the organisation in this case has remained 

 primitive, the organisms having preserved their general characters 



