206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY 



senescent one : there is continual change from the 

 time of birth to that of senile decay. This confusion 

 is unmanageable, and for it we substitute the char- 

 acteristic form and functioning, and that phase in 

 the life-history of the organism which suggests all 

 that the previous phases have led up to, and all that 

 subsequent phases take away. Thus there is con- 

 tained in our idea of the species (2) the notion 

 of a typical moment in an individual transforma- 

 tion. It is not a " snap-shot " of some moment 

 in the life-history that we make : in identifying 

 a larval form as some species of animal we are 

 identifying it with all the other phases of the life- 

 history. 



Since we accept the doctrine of transformism, the 

 specific idea also includes that of an evolutionary 

 process. For the organic world is a flux of becoming, 

 and species are only moments in this becoming. It 

 does not help us to reflect that if the hypothesis of 

 evolution by mutations is true the process is a dis- 

 continuous one : mutability is the result of periods 

 of immutability during which the change was germi- 

 nating, so to speak. In this flux of becoming we seize 

 moments at which the specific form flashes out — not 

 as instantaneous views of the flux, but as aspects 

 of it which suggest the steps, the morphological pro- 

 cesses, by which the transmutation of the species 

 has been effected. Thus our specific idea represents 

 not only a phase of becoming in an individual life- 

 history, but also a phase of becoming in an evolutionary 



history. 



Whether we consider this evolutionary movement 

 as the working out of a Creative Thought, or as the 

 development of elements assembled together by design, 

 or as the results of the action of a mechanism working 



