HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 195 



change it does, and in the end changes must be due to 

 the whole of the environment. Exactly the same may be 

 said of the social organism. Few who take a philo- 

 sophical view of history would deny that the most salient 

 fact about man is really his conservatism. They might 

 even adopt the terminology of the biologists, and say his 

 germ-plasm altered not at all. Yet on further reflection 

 they would admit that a similar " victory over nature," 

 as occurs when a cell gets hold of a new tool, occurs when 

 man learns to use steam or electricity. From one point 

 of view, with a short time-element, social change seems 

 rapid. From another it appears slow. We may say 

 that any organ is elastic or rigid, just as we please, 

 according to the point of view we happen to take at the 

 time. 



As I have pointed out in other places, the obscurity 

 of cellular phenomena is probably greatly increased by 

 the assumption that the nucleus is " alive," that is, 

 composed of protoplasm. 1 There seems no evidence for 

 this beyond the fact that it contains nucleins, the whole 

 chemistry of which was worked out by Emil Fischer 

 (Bayliss). These nucleins are compounds of a protein 

 with nucleic acid. Many enzymes deal with their meta- 

 bolism, and it is far more probable that they are the 

 reserve food protein of the living protoplasm than part 

 of that much more obscure and complex protein engine. 

 Certainly it seems that a far clearer notion of a cell's 

 activities is reached if we conceive it as a social aggregate 

 of protoplasmic units, however complex they may be, 

 with a storehouse of food and tools or working catalytic 

 bodies, than if we regard the varying moving nucleus as 

 a live part of it. When a test-bearing protozoon has 



1 Vide Method in Science. 



