36 THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



ing them to be due to an inner impulse, and 

 hence they furnish no justification for such a 

 hypothesis. 



In his recent presidential address before the 

 British Association Bateson has inverted this 

 idea. I suspect that his effort was intended as 

 little more than a tour de force. He claims 

 for it no more than that it is a possible line of 

 speculation. Perhaps he thought the time had 

 come to give a shock to our too confident views 

 concerning evolution. Be this as it may, he 

 has invented a striking paradox. Evolution 

 has taken place through the steady loss of in- 

 hibiting factors. Living matter was stopped 

 down, so to speak, at the beginning of the 

 world. As the stops are lost, new things 

 emerge. Living matter has changed only in 

 that it has become simpler. 



Natural Selection 



Darwin 



Of the four great historical speculations 

 about evolution, the doctrine of Natural Selec- 

 tion of Darwin and Wallace has met with the 

 most widespread acceptance. In the last lee- 



