Heredity, Variation and Genius 101 



ing denunciation, silently condone successful 

 fraud ; too easily shrinking from sincerely seeing 

 and telling how virtue actually fares in the par- 

 ticular. Certain it is that the subtle scoundrelism 

 which craftily despoils hundreds of persons by 

 vile commercial fraud, without the least regard 

 to the desolation caused, does not meet with the 

 reprobation and stern punishment which in old 

 times were meted out swiftly to the ruder work 

 of the open highwaymen. 



Here 1 may note by the way, in hope to pro- 

 voke insight and enquiry into an overlooked 

 aspect of things, that not an organism nor an 

 organ of an organism but has observed the funda- 

 mental law of social organization in evolution 

 from its primal self- regarding elements, from the 

 simple cell intent to maintain and multiply itself 

 to the diverse cells in the complex multicellular 

 organism, and observes it now in the preservation 

 of its vital unity and sound performance of its 

 functions. The life of the organism is funda- 

 mentally the life of the cell, and self-interest the 

 fundamental motive of cell-life, as of every life. 

 What then must needs happen in the struggle of 

 life amidst the diversities of circumstances ? The 

 fundamental motive is necessarily modified in 

 expression by the conditions of the organic 

 environment in which the cell is adapted struc- 

 turally and performs its function ; it cannot live 

 all to itself, it must have adaptive regard to the 

 other selves in the whole of which it forms a part, 



