248 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



Did one piece of stem protoplasm contain the 

 possibilities of all the branches ? And why did 

 the branches which all sprang from a parent stem, 

 and which were all under the laws of heredity, come 

 to vary to such an extraordinary extent ? If we 

 are to assume a primordial progenitor of all life, 

 we must attribute to it such potentialities that it 

 seems superfluous to call in Selection to correct 

 its mistakes. Unless, indeed, in the first cell it 

 foresaw the last ; unless each variation was on the 

 way to somethings evolution from a bit of proto- 

 plasm into all th.Q physiologically competent vegetables 

 and animals of the world could not have occurred. 

 There must have been such a formative spirit as 

 Plato supposed torturing " the unwilling dross that 

 checked its flight into beasts and birds" ; or the 

 developing beings must have been " continually 

 moved by a certain principle contained in them- 

 selves." We cannot otherwise account for so 

 many births and so few abortions. As Aristotle 

 pointed out, it is not a few things that show 

 apparent purposive adaption, " for these parts and 

 everything which is produced in Nature are either 

 always or for the most part purposively produced." 

 We cannot believe that so many living things 

 were successfully produced by evolution unless the 

 general process was inevitable, and independent of 

 the accidents of environment. 



