ORGANIC POLARITY AND MUTATION 97 



tions in the molecular composition of living matter; the author 

 dwells rather upon 'nutritive' variations affecting his 'determi- 

 nants ' in the germ-plasm. Indeed, he even goes so far as to say 

 (Vol. II, p. 204), "In my opinion, at all events, there is no such 

 thing as a ' tendency ' of the protoplasm to vary." 



It so happens, moreover, that none of the prominent vi^riters on 

 the evolution theory seem to have devoted much consideration to 

 the question of the variability of the lower forms of life ; and what 

 is still more surprising is the fact that none of them seem to appre- 

 ciate how incompatible is the existence of myriads of the lowest 

 forms of life at the present day with the commonly accepted belief 

 that all the forms of life which have ever lived upon the earth have 

 gradually developed, through endless generations, from primordial 

 forms first appearing upon its surface when it became cool 

 enough for the existence of living things. All this astounding 

 evolution has, as they assume, taken place by virtue of the plas- 

 ticity of living matter in co-operation with other varying factors ; 

 and yet the surface of the earth is found to swarm everywhere at 

 the present day with infinite multitudes of organisms of the lowest 

 type. How utterly contradictory this seems to be. 



Yet notwithstanding this remarkable discrepancy between fact 

 and theory, biologists make no attempt to solve the difficulty. At 

 the same time they either deny or try to explain away the cogency 

 of the evidence pointing to the occurrence of Archebiosis and 

 Heterogenesis — though such occurrences seem alone capable of 

 reconciling facts and theories. Certainly, on the assumption of 

 only one natural origin of living matter in a remote geological 

 past no satisfactory account can be given of the present existence 

 of swarms of lowest, highly variable, living organisms which would 

 be at all in accord with the doctrine of Evolution. Some, it is 

 true, grant that a natural origin of living matter may have occurred 

 many times in the past, though they believe there is no evidence of 

 its occurrence, or of the occurrence of Heterogenesis at the present 

 day : consequently they remain equally unable to give any rational 

 account of the present existence almost everywhere of countless 

 swarms of the lowest types of life. 



Even Herbert Spencer, for once, seems to have yielded to the 

 voice of authority, emanating from his friend Huxley, and to have 

 been persuaded that no positive evidence could be, or had been, 

 obtained by means of experiment demonstrating the de novo origin 

 of living matter in the present day. And no good evidence of 



7 



