XL] SPECIFIC GENESIS. 243 



internal power is a great, perhaps the main, determining 

 agent. 



It will, however, be replied that such an entity is no 

 vera causa ; that if the conception is accepted, it is no real 

 explanation ; and that it is merely a roundabout way of 

 saying that the facts are as they are, while the cause re- 

 mains unknown. To this it may be rejoined that for all 

 who believe in the existence of the abstraction " force " at 

 all, other than will, this conception of an internal force 

 must be accepted and located somewhere cannot be elim- 

 inated altogether ; and that therefore it may as reasona- 

 bly be accepted in this mode as in any other. 



It was urged at the end of the third chapter that it is 

 congruous to credit mineral species with an internal power 

 or force. By such a power it may be conceived that crys- 

 tals not only assume their external symmetry, but even 

 repair it when injured. Ultimate chemical elements must 

 also be conceived as possessing an innate tendency to form 

 certain unions, and to cohere in stable aggregations. This 

 was considered toward the end of Chapter VIII. 



Turning to the organic world, even on the hypothesis 

 of Mr. Herbert Spencer or that of Mr. Darwin, it is impos- 

 sible to escape the conception of innate internal forces. 

 With regard to the physiological units of the former, Mr. 

 Spencer himself, as we have seen, distinctly attributes to 

 them " an innate tendency " to evolve the parent-form from 

 wliich they sprang. With regard to the gemmules of Mr. 

 Darwin, we have seen, in Chapter X., with how many 

 innate powers, tendencies, and capabilities, they must each 

 be severally endowed, to reproduce their kind, to evolve 

 complex organisms or cells, to exercise germinative affin- 

 ity, etc. 



If then (as was before said at the end of Chapter VIII.) 

 such innate powers must be attributed to chemical atoms, 

 to mineral species, to gemmules, and to physiological units, 



