CHAP, xviii A "FAIRY TALE OF SCIENCE"? 237 



assumption leaves the door open for the further as- 

 sumption that acquired qualities will be inherited. I 

 do not see that it compels us to hold that view. An 

 acquired quality may be (as it were) only skin deep 

 having no reaction on the inner life of the organism 

 not stamping its mark there, and therefore not 

 stamping its mark on the offspring, which reproduces 

 that inner life in a new generation. If living shells, 

 transported from a northern sea to the Mediter- 

 ranean, assume the same bright markings found in 

 native Mediterranean forms, who will believe that 

 the change, however conspicuous, is the same thing 

 as transition to a different species ? They are still 

 essentially the same, and their offspring will be es- 

 sentially the same, bright if developed in the Medi- 

 terranean, dull if developed in the north. But that 

 the deeper qualities of the parental life are all repro- 

 duced by it in its offspring transferred from it to 

 its offspring seems to correspond best to the 

 proved nature of an organism as a unity or system, 

 in which all parts are in reciprocal intercourse, and 

 the whole determines all the parts. One mark or 

 outcome of this reciprocity will be the alternation 

 already spoken of, owl from egg, egg from owl. 



Darwin represents this natural assumption; but as 

 it occurs in him it is attended by some peculiarities 

 due to modern science. Science is bent on finding a 

 mechanical cause for every mechanical result, and on 

 eschewing mysticism. The effort is laudable, if it 

 can be carried through without injustice to the facts 

 of organic life. But it results in a singularly self- 

 confident materialism ; or so one is tempted to think. 

 It analyses the organism into a bundle of qualities, 



