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98 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



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from which they were derived^ but work in antagonism 

 to produce copies of their respective parent organisms • 

 and hence^ ultimately^ results an organism in which traits 

 of the one are mixed with traits of the other/ (p, 254.) 

 Unless we have recourse to considerations of this 

 kind^ or to some such hypothesis as that which Mr, 

 Darwin has put forth under the name of ^ Pangenesis y 

 it seems absolutely impossible for us to give any ex- 

 planation of the familiar fact, that in the ordinary 

 processes of reproduction, all organisms, whether high 

 or low in the scale of complexity — animal, vegetal, or 

 protistic — produce offspring which more or less directly 

 xlevelop into organisms similar to themselves. Very 

 grave difficulties appear to stand in the way of Mr, 

 Darwin's hypothesis, which looks like a relic of the 

 Old, rather than a fitting appanage of the new Evolu- 

 tion philosophy 2. On the other hand, Mr. Spencer's 

 totally different hypothesis concerning .^physiological 



1 ( 



Plants and Animals under Domestication,' vol ii. p. 357. Mr. 

 Darwin says : — * Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every cell 

 or unit, not only during the adult state, but during all the stages of 

 .development. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in the dormant state 

 have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation either 

 into buds or into the sexual elements. . . . Hence ovules and pollen- 

 grains, — the fertilized seed or egg as well as buds,— include and consist 

 of a multitude of germs thrown off from each separate atom of the 

 organism: So that Pangenesis ' implies that the whole organisation, in 

 the sense of every separate atom or unit, reproduces itself (pp- 374 ^^^ 



358)- 



^ See an article entitled 'Darwin's Hypotheses,' by Mr. G. H. Lewes, 

 in ' Foitnightly Review' for 1868, and Mr. St. George Mivart's ' Genesis 

 £)f Species ' (1871), phap. x. 



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