THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 363 



tury ? There is no doubt, Professor Bateson tells us, that our 

 cultivated Sweet Peas " have been derived from the one wild 

 bi-colour form by a process of successive removals ". (Pres- 

 idential Address Brit. Association, Australia, 1914, p. 18.) 



Professor Bateson is one of the foremost living aetiologists, 

 and respect is due to his pronouncement that we must begin 

 seriously to consider " whether the course of Evolution 

 can at all reasonably be represented as an unpacking of an 

 original complex, which contained within itself the whole 

 range of diversity which living things present. ... As 

 we have got to recognise that there has been an Evolution, 

 that somehow or other the forms of life have arisen from 

 fewer forms, we may as well see whether we are limited 

 to the old view that evolutionary progress is from the simple 

 to the complex, and whether after all it is conceivable that 

 the process was the other way about .... At first it 

 may seem rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial 

 form or forms of protoplasm could have contained complex- 

 ity enough to produce the divers types of life. But is it 

 easier to imagine that these powers could have been conveyed 

 by extrinsic additions? " 



Professor Bateson asks us not to think of the primordial 

 forms of life as necessarily very simple. We are to think of 

 them as richly endowed with initiatives and potentialities. 

 He is particularly inclined to this view because his extraor- 

 dinarily fine experimental work has led him to conclude that 

 most of the novelties that appear nowadays in garden and 

 breeding-pen are due to the removal of hindrances that sup- 

 press or mask underlying qualities. There has been an un- 

 packing of a crowded treasure-box and a placing of assorted 

 jewels in special caskets. Mr. Bateson appears to believe that 

 the reason why we are not all geniuses is not that we have 



