Heredity, Variation and Genius 41 



plainly due to the inherited effects of the action 

 of the environment on the individual : evolutional 

 variation through involutional adaptation the 

 original cause and primal rule of Nature. Yes, 

 say Weismann and his submissive followers, that 

 was so once but it is not so now ; such action 

 only went on in the lowest unicellular organisms ; 

 when the cells were differentiated in multicellular 

 organisms the primal rule was abolished, the 

 distinction between body-cell and germ-cell made 

 absolute, and the transmission of acquired charac- 

 ters to the germs abruptly ended. Thenceforth 

 onward and upward from the simplest multi- 

 cellular bodies to the highest human germ-cells 

 through untold millions of years the variations 

 have been either spontaneous starts, or due to 

 successive combinations of germ-cells, none of 

 which owed anything but sustenance to the vitally 

 environing body or to the larger physical environ- 

 ment in which they and it chanced to be placed. 

 An inexhaustible fund of variation possibilities 

 with rigid exclusion of outside influence even so 

 much as to excite the intrinsic variation, that is 

 the apparent assumption. 



Without doubt the rule of organic progress 

 from the simple and general to the complex and 

 special is for a successive division of labour to 

 go along with a successive differentiation of cells. 

 In multicellular organisms the cells were first 

 differentiated for growth and reproduction ; after 

 that the body-cells underwent further differentia- 



