HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 197 



so, while its decrease follows on the retention of what is no 

 longer needed or effective — a highly conservative pro- 

 ceeding. The conservative tendency to retain property 

 of all kinds is thus seen in the very cell, and a house 

 crowded with useless lumber has its true analogue in a 

 so-called senescent cell, which has become static and rigid 

 with a morbid " sense of property." Old age is truly 

 hindrance and poisoning, not necessarily any alteration 

 of protoplasmic units, whatever they may be. 



To some it may seem an unjustifiable inference, but 

 the conclusions reached in this way tend to show that 

 every determinant, late or early, is a definite tool or engine. 

 England is not the same country that it was when wood 

 was used instead of coal. It changed with great rapidity 

 when the use of steam became common. Electricity 

 has till greater possibilities of change. But we cannot 

 assert that the brains of the modern business man are 

 better than those of the Athenians, or that Watt and 

 Stephenson were greater geniuses than men's early ancestor 

 who first made a wheel, or the one who discovered that 

 water poured on the early rude axle acted as a cooling 

 agent and lubricant. The reason of the rapid advance 

 of the Americans in material civilization was their adapta- 

 tion of the English tools into an organism less cumbered 

 with static elements. Vested interests discover them- 

 selves as slowers of metabolism, and as obstacles to new 

 construction, the result of new tools which can be acquired 

 and transmitted. Germ-plasm on this view is just the 

 same as any other plasm, and if the neo-Darwinians 

 insist that practically, that is, in any given time, it does 

 not alter, no one will have any quarrel with them. But 

 those who believe that cell is a social aggregate using tools 

 as much as an animal or a society, and that the same laws 



