12 INITIATIVE IN EVOLUTION 



versity, therefore, we have to admit that there is no evolutionary 

 change which in the present state of our knowledge we can positively 

 declare not due to loss." 1 (Italics mine.) These two statements of 

 1914 are enough to show that the biologist of 1894, 1899, 1909 and 

 1914 has evolved in a definite line, and it is to his honour that he 

 has remembered " to thine ownself be true." But he is not so true 

 to himself in his scorn of those who propound theories. For myself 

 I would give little for the biologist who did not hold or propound 

 some theory. What was the penultimate and stirring message of 

 the gifted G. B. Howes 1 " We live by ideas, we advance by a 

 knowledge of the facts." The self-denying ordinance affirmed and 

 reaffirmed by Prof. Bateson is not observed even in the Melbourne 

 and Sydney addresses. In the former, he says " at first it may 

 seem rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial form or forms 

 of protoplasm could have contained complexity enough to produce 

 the divers types of life," and asks us to open our minds to this 

 possibility. Again " I have confidence that the artistic gifts of 

 mankind will prove to be due not to something added to the make- 

 up of an ordinary man, but to the absence of factors which in the 

 normal person inhibit the development of these gifts." And at 

 Sydney, " Ages before written history began, in some unknown 

 place, plants, or more likely a plant of wheat lost the dominant 

 factor to which this brittleness is due, and the recessive thrashable 

 wheat resulted. Some man noticed this wonderful novelty, and 

 it has been disseminated over the earth. The original variation 

 may well have occurred once only in a single germ," and " so must 

 it have been with man." 2 



These are three stupendous stretches of imagination and theory 

 in one address, which would have been the poorer if they had not 

 overcome the accomplished speaker's dislike of the theories — of 

 others. If they are not ideal constructions of a high order I do not 

 know the meaning of that term. They are worthy of Weismann 

 the Prince of ideal constructionists. Prof. Bateson might indeed be 

 another Newton with his Hypotheses non jingo. 



Turning to another important biological doctrine one can see 

 what it may be legitimate to call a bi-phyletic parallelism in the 

 biological make-up of Prof. Bateson. Again is seen consistency of 

 view and loyalty to his first love. Two references from these 

 addresses will be enough to introduce the point. 



At Melbourne, " We thus reach the essential principle that 

 an organism cannot pass on to offspring a factor which it did not 

 itself receive in fertilization." 3 



1 Nature, 1914. 2 Op. cit., 1914. 3 Op. cit., 1914. 



