#4 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 1213 
and superseded by another. In doing so I will follow cautiously along the same 
pate by which Darwin started to construct his provisional theory of pangenesis ; 
ut it is not in the least necessary to go so far as that theory or to entangle our- 
selves in any questioned hypothesis. 
There can be no doubt that heredity proceeds to a considerable extent, perhaps 
principally, in a piecemeal or piebald fashion, causing the person of the child to be 
to that extent a mosaic of independent ancestral heritages, one part coming with 
more or less variation from this progenitor, and another from that. To express this 
aspect of inheritance, where particle proceeds from particle, we may conveniently 
describe it as ‘ particulate.’ 
So far as the transmission of any feature may be regarded as an example of 
particulate inheritance, so far (it seems little more than a truism to assert) the 
element from which that feature was developed must have been particulate also. 
Therefore, wherever a feature in a child was not personally possessed by either 
parent, but transmitted through one of them from a more distant progenitor, the 
element whence that feature was developed must have existed in a particulate, 
though impersonal and latent form, in the body of the parent. The total heritage 
of that parent will have included a greater variety of material than was utilised 
in the formation of his own personal structure. Only a portion of it became 
developed ; the survival of at least a small part of the remainder is proved, and 
that of a larger part may be inferred by his transmitting it to the person of his 
child. Therefore the organised structure of each individual should be viewed as the 
fulfilment of only one out of an indefinite number of mutually exclusive possibilities. 
It is the development of a single sample drawn out of a group of elements. The 
conditions under which each element in the sample became selected are, of course, 
unknown, but it is reasonable to expect they would fall under one or other of the 
following agencies: first, self-selection, where each element selects its most suitable 
neighbour, as in the theory of pangenesis; secondly, general co-ordination, or the 
influence exerted on each element by many or all of the remaining ones, whether 
in its immediate neighbourhood or not; finally, a group of diverse agencies, alike 
only in the fact that they are not uniformly helpful cr harmful, that they influence 
with no constant purpose—in philosophical language, that they are not teleological; 
in popular language, that they are accidents or chances. Their inclusion renders it 
impossible to predict the peculiarities of individual children, though it does not 
prevent the prediction of average results. We now see something of the general 
character of the conditions amid which the stable equilibrium that characterises each 
race must subsist. 
Political analogies of stability and change of type abound, and are useful to fix 
the ideas, as I pointed out some years ago. Let us take that which is afforded 
by the government of a colony which has become independent. The individual 
colonists rank as particulate representatives of families or other groups in the 
parent country. The organised colonial government ranks as the personality of 
the colony, being its mouthpiece and executive. The government is evolved amid 
political strife, one element prevailing here and another there. The prominent 
victors band themselves into the nucleus of a party, additions to their number and 
revisions of it ensue, until a body of men are associated capable of conducting 
a completely organised administration. The kinship between the form of govern- 
ment of the colony and that of the parent state is far from direct, and resembles 
in a general way that which I conceive to subsist between the child and his 
mid-parentage. We should expect to find many points of resemblance between 
the two, and many instances of great dissimilarity, for our political analogy teaches 
us only too well on what slight accidents the character of the government may 
depend when parties are nearly balanced. 
The appearance of a new and useful family peculiarity is a boon to breeders, 
who by selection in mating gradually reduce the preponderance of those ancestral 
elements that endanger reversion. The appearance of a new type is due to causes 
that lie beyond our reach, so we ought to welcome every useful one as a happy 
chance, and do our best to domicile and perpetuate it. When heredity shall have 
become much better and more generally understood than now, I can believe that 
