No. 383.] VARIATION VERSUS HEREDITY. 831 
form of protoplasmic matter, must be conceived of as in a 
normal state of mutability. 
That which makes an organic body to be vital, and distin- 
guishes it from matter in an inorganic state, is this constant 
and incessant varying. 
Recognizing this as the fundamental characteristic of living 
matter, it is very easy to conceive how varying will proceed 
constantly and in all directions, like a gas expanding, except 
when checked and guided by the impact and restraints of 
external conditions. | 
I have now stated briefly the meaning of the proposition 
that variation, and not heredity, is the fundamental characteristic 
of the phenomena of organisms, and a few of the arguments 
which recommend this view to consideration and acceptance as 
a working hypothesis for future investigation. 
These arguments may be stated briefly as follows : 
First : In any concrete case of natural selection, or similar 
processes, the actual result of selection is the retarding and 
checking of variation ; and the offspring necessarily evolves 
more slowly than its parent, in direct proportion to the efficacy 
of the natural selection. 
Secondly: That the organic processes by which variation takes 
place in an organism differ from the ordinary process of devel- 
opment in individual growth only by passing beyond the limit 
reached by the ancestor; and hence variation is but a phase of 
the fundamental genetic process peculiar to living organisms. 
Thirdly: That every act of variation is anterior to experience, 
and thus is necessarily original and genetic, whereas every heredi- 
tary act is necessarily secondary to, and the result of, experience, 
and that the law of heredity must, therefore, be acquired in the 
process of evolution, and is not fundamental. 
Fourthly : That, as to struggle for existence, the most strenuous 
effort that is made (both by the parent and by the offspring) in 
the course of organic processes is that which produces antago- 
nism of interests. On the part of the parent, it parts with that 
which has cost it the greatest expenditure of energy ; and on the 
part of the offspring, the result is the loss, in part or wholly, of 
the only source of its living up to the moment of the struggle. 
