CORROBORATIVE READINGS 



" The prevailing doctrine of organic evolution presents 

 to us a vast stream of ' cells ' and ' cell colonies ' j ostling 

 and struggling with one another and with the adversities 

 of their environments; some survive and the rest are 

 killed off. According to a law of Natural Selection, 

 only the fittest survive. 



" No one who has any knowledge of the facts doubts 

 that this description of evolution is in the main correct, 

 but it is far too vague. What are cells? and what are 

 cell-colonies? What is the relation between them? are 

 they all hurrying on in a stream ? toward what end ? 

 Whence did they come ? Is it an independent rush ? a 

 great fountain of life obeying its own inner laws? . . . 



" These are some of the problems that confront the 

 present doctrine of organic evolution. We have passed 

 the stage of triumph over the discovery and now, after 

 fifty years, stand on the brink of the stream, conscious 

 of a deepening ignorance. What we most need is to be 

 able to read some clear and intelligible order into the 

 stream; such an order, if we could only find it, would 

 surely, in time, reveal to us some of the fundamental laws 

 of life. 



"It is such an order, I venture to think, that has 

 gradually dawned upon my mind during twenty years 

 spent in several distinct lines of biological research. 

 While pursuing each of these separate paths, I seemed 

 again and again to catch a glimpse of an evolutionary 

 truth wider than any as yet apprehended, and these 

 glimpses, when compared, were found to be merely dif- 



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