THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE 7 



physical. Professor Bateson (M., p. 5) thinks 

 it obvious that they are transmitted by the 

 spermatozoon and the ovum ; but it seems to 

 him " unlikely that they are in any simple or 

 literal sense material particles." And he goes 

 on to say, and this, I think, is one of his most 

 important statements : " I suspect rather that 

 their properties depend on some phenomenon of 

 arrangement." 



Now, if there be a law behind the phenomena 

 made clear to us by Mendelian experiments (as 

 Mendelians are never tired of asserting), then it 

 becomes in no way impertinent to ask how that 

 law came into existence, and who formulated it. 

 Darwinism, according to Driesch, 1 " explained 

 how by throwing stones one could build houses 

 of a typical style." In other words, it " claimed 

 to show how something purposively constructed 

 could arise by absolute chance ; at any rate this 

 holds of Darwinism as codified in the seventies 

 and eighties." Of course the Blind Chance 

 doctrine breaks down utterly when it comes to 

 be applied to selected cases, and nothing more 

 definitely disposes of it than the very definite law 

 which emerges as the result of the Mendelian 

 experiments. That is obvious to the prophets of 

 Mendelism ; but, whilst they admit this, they 

 will have nothing to say to the lawgiver. That 

 is the " rankest metaphysics," as Dr. Johnstone 

 puts it, 2 or " mysticism," as others prefer to call 

 it. And yet nothing is more clear than the logical 



1 Op. dt., pp. 137-8. 



2 The Philosophy of Biology, p. 64. 



