CHAPTER IV. 



INITIAL VARIATIONS AND TOTAL EXPERIENCE. 



The present chapter is on a priori lines and will perhaps be dismissed 

 ■with a wave of the hand or hurriedly skimmed over, but I pray the 

 reader at least to read the two or three last pages of it. It is at 

 any rate suggestive, and perhaps I may anticipate the comments 

 of the neo-Darwinian and throw myself on his mercy by mentioning 

 a remark of the late Sir Andrew Clark, prince of physicians and 

 genial cynic, which he made to a patient in my presence. A lady 

 not distinguished for depth of thought asked him a rather silly 

 question in medicine. As if offended he drew himself up, holding 

 in his hand a cup of tea which he was enjoying, and replied at once 

 " Madam, you must get a younger and more inexperienced man 

 than I am to answer you that question." 



A very high degree of probability may be attached to the 

 presupposition that Lamarckian factors, even in their humblest 

 form, may enter into the story of the organisms as historical and 

 living beings. Every hypothesis in matters of science, or, to put 

 it at its lowest, every scientific guess must transcend the evidence 

 at the time available. 



Total Experience. 



The suggestion I venture to make here is that if we take a 

 comprehensive view of certain two great groups of phenomena 

 in nature, which may be termed universal in their extent, it is difficult 

 to conceive that they are not causally connected in the sense that 

 one is the universal antecedent of the other. On the one hand 

 are found universal minute differences, not only between any pair 

 of organisms, but of any two corresponding parts of any organism, 

 even to the size and shape of each leaf on each plant. On the 

 other is universal discontinuity of total experience of all organisms. 

 This term includes all the stimuli of use and environment to which 

 an organism is exposed throughout its whole existence, and its 

 response to them. It includes the whole succession of active and 

 passive stimuli which begin with the formation of a zygote in higher 

 forms, for example, and continue till the death or end of reproductive 

 life of the individual. It stands for such stimuli as arise from 



