THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 



not got it in us, but that we cannot get it out. When the 

 genius emerges it is not really a new achievement that has 

 been made, it is that certain hindrances or inhibitors have 

 been removed. So the process of evolution has been a suc- 

 cession of liberations rather than of achievements, a succes- 

 sion of gains by loss. 



In this interesting theory we recognise two truths: first, 

 that when genuine living creatures did first appear as going 

 concerns, they had within them the secret of a possible 

 glorious future (ce nest que le premier pas qui coute) ; 

 and second, that many apparently novel acquisitions are 

 due to the removal of some inhibitor or some mask or some 

 complexity in the hindrance. We are unwilling, however, 

 to accept Professor Bateson's picture as a complete one, and 

 that for several reasons. (1) The first is that it makes the 

 origin and nature of the primordial organisms too utterly 

 miraculous if we suppose them to have had such a rich 

 stock of initiatives and implications. (2) It seems to lead 

 to a very mechanical picture of evolution, as if it were just 

 an age-long unrolling of a stupendous gramophone record. 

 Time is required for unrolling the record, but time does not 

 count for the gramophone, as it counts for the organism 

 which trades with it. Space is required for unrolling the 

 record, but space does not count for the gramophone as it 

 counts for the organism, which trafficks with its environ- 

 ment. (3) Given an artistic genius, we may assert that 

 all that he did in the last forty years of his life was in him 

 when he was twenty-one. But is this necessarily an accurate 

 statement? His achievements at thirty are the product of 

 his hereditary nature, admittedly well-expressed at his com- 

 ing of age, but also of what he has made of his life and his 

 chances, and of what society has made of him. The organ- 



