TRANSFORMISM 237 



less able to live and reproduce, and if it does reproduce, 

 its progeny are subject to the same disability. If, as 

 is usual, they simply do not matter, they may or may 

 not affect the direction of evolution. If they are of 

 advantage, that is, if they confer increased mastery 

 over the environment, over the inert things with which 

 the organism comes into contact, the latter enlarges its 

 universe or environment, lives longer, and transmits 

 to its progeny its increased powers of action. Indefinite 

 increase of power over inert matter is potential in 

 living things, and variation converts this potentiality 

 into actuality. 



This discussion is all very formal, but two conclusions 

 emerge from it : (i) the insufficiency of the mechanistic 

 hypotheses of transformism to account for all the 

 diversity of life that has appeared on the earth during 

 the limited period of time which physics allows for the 

 evolutionary process. There does not appear to be 

 any possibility of meeting this objection if we continue 

 to adhere to the hypothesis of transformism already 

 discussed : it faces us at every turn in our discussion. 

 How great a part is played, for instance, by " pure 

 chance " in the elimination of individual organisms 

 during the struggle for existence ! Let us think of a 

 shoal of sprats on which sea-birds are feeding : it is 

 chance which determines whether the birds prey on 

 one part of the shoal rather than another. Or let us 

 think of the millions of young fishes that are left 

 stranded on the sea-shore by the receding tide : it is 

 chance that determines whether an individual fish will be 

 left stranded in a shallow sandpool which dries up under 

 the sun's rays, rather than in a deeper one that retains 

 its water until the tide next flows over it. It is no 

 use to urge that there is no such thing as " pure chance," 

 and that what we so speak of is only the summation 



