METHOD IN SCIENCE 17 



when further budding or mitosis occurs. Without push- 

 ing these examples to extremes, it is worth showing 

 that phenomena, strictly and curiously analogous with 

 mitosis may occur. If a new colony gets too big for its 

 environment, and is " determined " (that is, driven by cir- 

 cumstances to enforced behaviour) to divide, what then 

 happens ? Stock is taken of the weapons, the tools, the 

 food. It is conceivable that all the tools must be assembled 

 and divided. We should in such a case get something like 

 a mitotic pattern. It would be rude and rough compared 

 with patterns in cells, just as cell patterns are probably 

 rude and rough compared with an experimental electro- 

 static pattern of mito-kinesis, where pure physical pheno- 

 mena are seen undisturbed. And yet it would be pattern 

 in so far as it was a new special order. Some celestial 

 observer, with a powerful microscope, would see peculiar 

 phenomena of arrangement and division, not to be under- 

 stood or even guessed at until actual division occurred. 

 The human " plasm " would divide : the " nuclear " 

 matter would be parted, and there would presently be two 

 organisms where there had previously been but one. 



And once more the environment would play its part. 

 Some new discovery might make a new race. After genera- 

 tions it is conceivable that such a race, furnished with all 

 sorts of acquired means and methods, might find its 

 ancestors as barbarian as we find many primitive races 

 and, in its turn, would send forth colonies to acquire 

 further characteristics, or to lose those which it pos- 

 sessed, and revert to the savage or embryonic state. 



If, as Mill declared, an analogy is an incomplete 

 induction, its incompleteness can be compensated 

 for by the discovery of other analogies, so that in 

 the end we approach, and may practically reach, com- 



