80 THE BIOCOSMOS PRELIMINARY. 



has been endowed with a technical name 

 Homo genesis, the genesis of like Life from 

 like of course through the individual. The 

 living organism reproduces its species, it is 

 said; species includes those of a kind. But 

 the species are many and very diverse, even 

 if alike in certain characteristics. Evolution, 

 however, demands that these diverse species 

 have a unity of origin, and thus clashes with 

 Homogenesis, quite as we saw its thrust 

 against Biogenesis. But the collision now is 

 inside the realm of Life, not of the organic 

 with the inorganic. Thus Evolution creates 

 difficulty with what seems an immediate sen- 

 suous fact : the descent of like Life from like. 

 On the other hand there has been some be- 

 lief, both popular and scientific, in the oppo- 

 site doctrine known in the books as Hetero- 

 f/enesis, the genesis of the unlike Life through 

 the individual; or as is often said, the like 

 produces the unlike (an expression not logi- 

 cally correct). Very wide-spread is the be- 

 lief that a vegetable may sometimes produce 

 or become an animal, and the reverse; one 

 kind of Life is transmutable into another 

 quite as we noted people believing that a non- 

 vital object, like a horse hair, might turn vital 

 and crawl. In poetry and mythology, with- 

 out doubt resting on popular faith originally, 

 is found the doctrine of metamorphosis 



