
250 NATURE AND LIFE. 
type, or from that of their internal modes of action. The 
plan of such an undertaking is the boldest of all those that 
imagination and human knowledge dream of, in the region 
of scientific activity. Yet Claude Bernard, whom no one 
suspects of unfaithfulness to the method of experiment, 
does not hesitate to regard itasallowable. He is convinced 
that, by acting on the phenomena of evolution, we might be 
able to alter the configuration and to transform the arrange- 
ments of the organs. ‘ Observation tells us,” he says, “ that 
by cosmic influences, and especially by means that modify 
nutrition, we act upon organisms in various-ways, and we 
create individual varieties possessing special properties, and 
making, in some sort, new beings. . .. There is no reason 
why these modifying agencies, working on the living organ- 
ism under certain conditions, may not produce changes such 
as would create new species: for we must conceive of spe- 
cles as being in themselves the result of persistence for an 
indefinite time in their same conditions of being and of nu- 
trition, in consequence of an earlier organic tendency which 
was communicated to them by theirancestors. By modify- 
ing the internal media of nutrition and evolution, by taking 
hold of organized matter in some sort at its springing state, 
we may hope to change its course of evolution, and conse- 
quently its final organic expression.” * 
These remarks of the famous physiologist, to which, per- 
haps enough attention has not been given, are, however, in 
the highest degree worthy of attracting notice from those 
savants engaged in the problem of the transformation of 
species. Certainly Darwinism is something more than a 
bold hypothesis. The partisans of his teaching assert that 
living species have been in former times transformed, but 
thus far they have produced no instance of such a transfor- 
mation taking place in the past, and the doubt is allowable 
whether they will ever be able to give retrospective proofs 
1 “ Report on the Progress of Physiology,” pp. 3 and 113. 
