EXTENSIONS OF DARWINISM 275 



to suggest as possible developments from an apparently simple 

 protoplasmic cell. The idea, therefore, that there were, or 

 could be, at any successive periods, anything of the nature of 

 the abrupt beginning of completely new organs which had 

 nothing analogous in preceding generations is quite unsup- 

 ported by what is known of the progressive development of 

 all structures through slight modification of those which pre- 

 ceded them. The objection as to the heglmiings of new organs 

 is a purely imaginary one, wdiich entirely falls to pieces in 

 view of the wdiole known process of development from the 

 simplest cell (though in reality no cell is simple) to ever 

 higher and more complex aggregations of cells, till we come 

 to Mammalia and to man. 



(2) The Co-ordination of Variations 



The next difficulty, one which Herbert Spencer laid much 

 stress on, is, that every variation, to be of any use to a species, 

 requires a number of concurrent variations, often in dilTerent 

 parts of the body, and these, it is said, cannot be left to 

 chance. Herbert Spencer discussed this poi';t at great length 

 in his Factors of Organic Evolution ; and, as one of the illus- 

 trative cases, he takes the giraffe, w^hose enormously long neck 

 and fore-legs, he thinks, would have required so many con- 

 current variations that we cannot suppose them to have oc- 

 curred through ordinary variation. He therefore argues that 

 the inherited effects of use and disuse are the onlv causes 

 which could have brought it about; and Darwin himself ap- 

 pears to have thought that such inheritance did actually occur. 



The points which Spencer mainly dwells upon are as fol- 

 lows : The increased length and massiveness of the neck 

 would require increased size and strength of the chest with 

 its bones and muscles to bear the additional weight, and also 

 great additions to the strength of the fore-legs to carry such 

 a burthen. Again, as the hind-legs have remained short, the 

 whole body is at a different angle from what it was before 

 the change from the ordinary antelope-type, and this would 



