GENESIS, HEREDITY, AND VARIATION. 285 



keeping the individuals of the same species, or of the variety, 

 true and uniform in character :" the idiosyncratic divergences 

 obliterate each other. Gamogenesis, then, is a means of 

 turning to positive advantage, the individual differentiations 

 which, in its absence, would result in positive disadvantage. 

 Were it not that individuals are ever being made unlike each 

 other by their unlike conditions, there would not arise among 

 them those contrasts of molecular constitution, which we have 

 seen to be needful for producing the fertilized germs of new 

 individuals. And were not these individual clifierentiations 

 ever being mutually cancelled, they would end in a fatal 

 narrowness of adaptation. 



This truth will be most clearly seen if we reduce it to its 

 purely abstract form, thus : — Suppose a quite homogeneous 

 species, placed in quite homogeneous conditions ; and suppose 

 the constitutions of all its members in complete concord with 

 their absolutely-uniform and constant conditions; what must 

 happen ? The species, individually and collectively, is in a 

 state of perfect moving equilibrium. All disturbing forces 

 have been eliminated. There remains no force which can, in 

 any way, change the state of this moving equilibrium ; either 

 in the species as a whole or in its members. But we have 

 seen [Fir^st Principles, § 133) that a moving equilibrium is but 

 a transition towards complete equilibration, or death. The 

 absence of diflferential or un- equilibrated forces among the 

 members of a species, is the absence of all forces that can 

 cause changes in the conditions of its members — is the ab- 

 sence of all forces which can initiate new organisms. To say, 

 as above, that complete molecular homogeneity existing 

 among the members of a species, must render impossible that 

 mutual molecular disturbance which constitutes fertilization, 

 is but another way of saying, that the actions and re-actions 

 of each organism, being in perfect balance with the actions 

 and re-actions of the environment upon it, there remains in 

 each organism, no force by which it differs from any other 

 — no force which any other does not meet with an exactly 



