122 DISCRIMINATIONS CHAP. 



which has once been set in the processes 

 of creation. There is an antecedent prob- 

 ability that anything done once has been 

 done again and again that, in fact, it is 

 part of a system, and in fulfilment of a law. 

 The conceivableness of this process 

 would be indefinitely increased if we 

 invoke the help of another principle, 

 and of another analogy in the actual 

 phenomena of organic life and that is 

 the great rapidity with which organic 

 germs can sometimes evolve their in- 

 volutions and develop their predestined 

 and prearranged adaptitudes. The Dar- 

 winian idea has persistently been that 

 the steps of development have been 

 always infinitesimally small, and that 

 only by the accumulation of these, 

 during immeasurable ages, could new 

 forms have been established. It has 

 long occurred to me that this assump- 

 tion is against the analogies of Nature, 



