THE EVOLUTION PROCESS 245 



logically akin; and this single and simple 

 rhythm of metabolisms, of passivities and 

 activities goes on into compound and re- 

 compounding rhythms, like the figures of the 

 pendulograph. The forms of life are thus 

 distinct and definite, because harmoniously 

 unified. They have a certain stability, great 

 or small, yet they are anew transformable, 

 like musical variations, like singing flames. 

 Thus from within are spun and woven and 

 shaped the manifold garments of Life, always 

 simple, though ever more and more Protean. 

 Our clue to the secret of variational evolution 

 thus holds good, is one and the same from 

 the ancient contrast of plant and animal up 

 through the great lifts of evolution, and down 

 through its ever recurrent falls; and if it 

 applies equally to the origin of classes and 

 orders, of genera and of species, why not also 

 to the varieties and mutations which natural- 

 ists are discussing, for the most part too 

 externally, at the present day? 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. As in plants 

 the species-maintaining functions prepon- 

 derate over the individual ones, so that 

 from annual to agave the plant must flower 

 although it die, so the same preponderance 

 appears in animals. The " self-interest " in 

 which the utilitarian economists found the 



