116 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



thus only chance variations which were inheritoil through panmixia 

 and gradually diffused over the whole species, how co\ild it come 

 about that all the variations were in the direction oi' smaller size? 

 Yet this is obviously the case. Wli}- should no variations in the 

 direction of larger size occur? And if this were so, why should 

 a useless organ not be maintained at its original size, if it be admitted 

 that an increase in size would be prevented by natural selection? 

 But this never occurs, and diminution in size is so absolutely the 

 rule that the idea of a ' vestigial or rudimentary ' organ suggests 

 a ' small organ ' almost more than an ' imperfect ' one. 



There must then be something else at work which causes the 

 minus-variations in a disused organ to preponderate persistently and 

 permanently over the plus-variations, and this something can lie 

 nowhere else than where the roots of all hereditary ^•ariations are to 

 be found — in the germ-plasm. This train of thought leads us to the 

 discovery of a process which we must call selection between the 

 elements of the germ-plasm, or, as I have named it shortly, Germinul 

 Selection. 



If the substance of the germ-plasm is — as we assumed — composed 

 of heterogeneous living particles, which have dissimilar roles in the 

 building up of the organism, there must of necessity be among them 

 a definite labile state of equilibrium, which cannot be disturbed 

 without modifying in some way the structure of the organism itself 

 which arises from the germ-plasm. But if our further view be 

 correct, that these individual and different living units of the germ- 

 plasm are 'determinants,' that is, are the primary constituents of 

 particular parts of the organism, in the sense that these parts could 

 not arise if their determinants were absent from the germ-plasm, and 

 that they would be different if the determinants were differently 

 composed, we can draw far-reaching deductions. 



It is true that we cannot learn anytliliKj directly in regard to 

 the intimate structure of the germ-plasm, and even in regai'd to tlie 

 vital processes going on within it we can only guess a very little, 

 but so much we may say — that its li\'ing parts are nourished, and 

 that they multiply. But it follows from this that nourishment in 

 a dissolved state umst penetiate between its vital particles, and tliat 

 whether the determinants grow, and at \\'hat rate they do so, depends 

 mainly on the amount of nourishment which reaches them. As long 

 as the germ-cells multiply by division the determinants have no other 

 function but to grow ; a part of their substance undergties oxidation 

 and thereby yields the supply of energy necessary to assimilation, 

 that is, to the formation of new living substance. 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



