250 NATURE AND LIFE. 



type, or from that of their internal modes of action. The 

 plan of such an undertaking is the boldest of all those that 

 imagination and human knowledge dream of, in the region 

 of scientific activity. Yet Claude Bernard, whom no one 

 suspects of unfaithfulness to the method of experiment, 

 does not hesitate to regard it as allowable. He is convinced 

 that, by acting on the phenomena of evolution, we might be 

 able to alter the configuration and to transform the arrange- 

 ments of the organs. " Observation tells us," he says, " that 

 by cosmic influences, and especially by means that modify 

 nutrition, we act upon organisms in various ways, and we 

 create individual varieties possessing special properties, and 

 making, in some sort, new beings. . . . There is no reason 

 why these modifying agencies, working on the living organ- 

 ism under certain conditions, may not produce changes such 

 as would create new species : for we must conceive of spe- 

 cies as being in themselves the result of persistence for an 

 indefinite time in their same conditions of being and of nu- 

 trition, in consequence of an earlier organic tendency which 

 was communicated to them by their ancestors. By modify- 

 ing the internal media of nutrition and evolution, by taking 

 hold of organized matter in some sort at its springing state, 

 we may hope to change its course of evolution, and conse- 

 quently its final organic expression." 



These remarks of the famous physiologist, to which, per- 

 haps enough attention has not been given, are, however, in 

 the highest degree worthy of attracting notice from those 

 savants engaged in the problem of the transformation of 

 species. Certainly Darwinism is something more than a 

 bold hypothesis. The partisans of his teaching assert that 

 living species have been in former times transformed, but 

 thus far they have produced no instance of such a transfor- 

 mation taking place in the past, and the doubt is allowable 

 whether they will ever be able to give retrospective proofs 



1 " Report on the Progress of Physiology," pp. 3 and 113. 



