116 REVERSION, NOT A 



grees in which their power of reversion to the full 

 structural build, has been modified by their conditions 

 of life. 



That reversion is ever ready to operate, — as are the 

 other powers of repair, in the case of a wound, in the 

 case of interstitial waste, and in the case of the repro- 

 duction of a lost member, — Darwin shows, when he 

 says (p. 483, Vol. ii, Animals and Plants, &c): 



"That there is a tendency, in the young of each, 

 successive generation, to produce the long-lost charac- 

 ters, and that this tendency, from some unknown 

 cause, sometimes prevails." 



This Reversion is, equally with the other powers of 

 repair, but a process of redintegration ; and, between it 

 and the others, there is no fundamental distinction. 

 All of the instances, which he adduces, of improve- 

 ment or positive variation, are merely instances of such 

 reintegration. When Mr. Darwin has furnished his 

 thousands of facts, he has not yet given a scintilla of 

 proof, or of evidence, of the indefinite development 

 of any species. For, all of the improvements, and all 

 of the positive variations, adduced by him, are but re- 

 growth, redintegration, and repair merely, of the specific 

 type ; and, upon no principle of logic, or of common 

 sense, may instances of regrowth, or of reintegration, or 

 of repair, or of re- development, or of reversion, serve as 

 data, for any theory of unlimited growth, or of unlim- 

 ited development; for the limit of this repair, reinte- 

 gration, or reversion, is the form respectively, of the 

 structure, from which the organism, in question, de- 

 parted. How repair, re-growth, regain, re-develop- 



