THE FOUNTAIN OF CHANGE 245 
germ-cell—the creature, we maintain, in its one- 
cell phase of being—play a more active part (like 
a Foraminifer artist building a shell of Synaptid 
anchors) and experiment in self-differentiation? 
Dr. Gates has a stern scientific mood and does 
not often let himself go in the region of speculation, 
but he does not forget that the organism is alive! 
“Just as an alpine climber dangling over a chasm 
may, by changing his hold, swing himself on to a 
shelf from which he can make a fresh start in some 
other direction, so we may think of the organism 
trying many unconscious experiments in its off- 
spring, some of which are hurled by the gravita- 
tional effect of natural selection into the abyss of 
extinction, while others with a more fortunate 
turn rest on a ledge of safety whence new essays 
of variability begin.” It is true that the author 
comes back to the chemical and structural com- 
plexity of the protoplasm and its unique irrita- 
bility, but we wish that he had dwelt longer on his 
picture of the organism as a climber. It may have 
no fixed purpose of getting to the top, yet there may 
be inseparable from it a restless experimenting in 
self-expression, bearing in the germ-cell the same 
relation to the insurgent efforts of the full-grown 
creature that the tentatives of dreamland bear to the 
achievements of open-eyed endeavor. 
