24 DARWINIAN AND SPENCERIAN 



possibility of there having been vital polygenesis seems 

 worthy of being filed for future consideration. On this view 

 the primordial protoplasmic units need not necessarily 

 be conceived as having been all of one uniform chemical 

 t5^e — there would haVe been a sufficiently close chemical 

 relationship to give rise to apparently similar protein 

 compounds and yet sufficient dissimilarity of structure 

 to produce divergence on further development. The 

 likeness and unlikeness would be of the same order as 

 that which obtains among the complex isomeric com- 

 pounds of carbon now known to chemists. It has fre- 

 quently been pointed out that even at the dawn of life, 

 as shown by the geological record, a marked differentia- 

 tion of type had taken place. This is generally explained, 

 and no doubt correctly explained, by the obliteration of 

 the earliest records of the life period by metamorphic 

 changes of the primitive rocks and so forth. 



But there may also be scope for the influence of 

 primordial ' isomerism ' in the sense suggested. Could we 

 restore the very earliest records of life upon this globe 

 we might expect to see on this view a much greater 

 convergence towards a common type than is now shown 

 among the fossils of the Cambrian rocks, and yet not 

 absolute uniformity — a dissimilarity due not altogether 

 to the struggle for life and survival of the fittest but in 

 part to the heritage of the primordial dissimilarity of 

 composition or of the ' isomerism ' of the ancestral carbon 

 compounds. Darwin's well-known metaphor of 'life, 

 with its several powers, having been originally breathed 

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one ' ^ may thus 

 have a real scientific basis.^ 



^ Originof species, 6tTied.,-p.42g. 



« It is only right to point out tliat the views advanced in this section 

 are at variance with Spencer's statement concerning the inapplicability 

 of the Selection Principle to inorganic phenomena. See ' Filiation of 

 Ideas ', p. 558. Chemical analogies have been made use of by Spencer, 

 especially in the Principles of Biology (Chapter I and Appendix), but 

 in a quite different sense to that now advocated. The nearest approach 

 to the present treatment of the subject that I have been able to find 

 is by Karl Pearson in the Grammar of Science, and especially in § i2, 



