246 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



At the back of this process of combinations we 

 have another the original dealing or the original 

 making of the cards. To what was that due ? To 

 the Lamarckian factor, to the direct action of environ- 

 ment, stamping itself upon the isolated living cell. 

 There is an absolute contrast, it is assumed, between 

 the two periods in the history of life. In the first, 

 variations were due directly to the environment, not 

 at all to natural selection, 1 which only acts upon vari- 

 ations submitted to it by sexual reproduction. In 

 other words, environment may be called the judge in 

 natural selection, but there is no need of environment 

 as a judge when it is itself the maker of the things to 

 be judged. If it is the maker, it gives a guarantee 

 along with its goods. If or so far as Lamarckism is 

 true, Darwinism, with its " natural selection," becomes 

 secondary if not superfluous, ranking at best as an 

 auxiliary and accelerating force. Thus, if the uni- 

 cellular organism bears the stamp of environment, it 

 has directly adjusted itself to the conditions of life ; 

 it is already certified as " fit to survive." But, in the 

 second great period, we are to believe that environ- 

 ment is helpless and natural selection omnipotent. 

 This is less arbitrary than it seems. In the unicellular 

 age the living creature is all surface, and, as it were, 

 at the mercy of environment. But in the multicellular 

 age the really vital matter, the " germ plasm," is 

 supposed to be carefully hidden away inside a body 

 and out of reach hidden within a body and even 

 (the theory says) independent of its vicissitudes, so 

 long as the body lives. The only way in which 

 nature can now affect germ plasm is by killing off 



1 So Weismann as stated by Romanes. 



