PRESENT EVOLUTIONARY CONFUSION 35 



" My scheme does not in any way discard the present 

 doctrine of descent, on the contrary it includes it; neither 

 does it deny the cell doctrine, although it modifies it. It 

 is chiefly in the stress it lays upon colony formation, a 

 factor well known to the morphologist but never yet 

 accorded its full value by the evolutionist, that it differs 

 from all former schemes. Colony formation, by periodi- 

 cally complicating the approaches to harmony between 

 organic life and its planetary environment brought about 

 by natural selection, is shown to be the chief constructive 

 factor in organic evolution, the great force which starts 

 period after period of a great evolutionary rhythm. In 

 this way the modern view is transformed in an almost 

 startling manner." 



H. M. BERNARD : Some Neglected Factors 

 in Evolution, pp. 271-7. 



" Let any one ask himself why he is present at a cer- 

 tain lecture. If he gives the answer in terms of the 

 Past, in terms of push, in terms of matter or of mass and 

 motion, all of which expressions are equivalent, then he 

 has no choice. Let him begin the statement where he 

 may, at 7 o'clock or 6 or 5 or 4, or a day or a month or a 

 year or a millennium in the past, it is all one; he must 

 describe himself and all his antecedents as pieces of 

 machinery, in fact as automata, in which each state of 

 motion has followed with iron rigour and necessity upon 

 the preceding; he must say that the molecular whirlwind 

 called his brain determined certain quiverings of his 

 efferent nerves, and that these quivers fell upon certain 

 muscles and determined certain contractions and relaxa- 

 tions and consequent motions that finally landed him upon 

 the chair occupied. Such is the present word, such must 

 be the last word, of physical science, and it is a most ex- 



