Xo. 579] 



PROGRESSIVE EVOLUTION 



155 



counteract that law, for each generation gets a better 

 start than its predecessor, and is able to carry on 

 a little further its struggle for existence with the en- 

 vironment. It may be said that this argument proves 

 too much, that if it were correct all organisms would by 

 this time have attained to a high degree of organization, 

 and that at any rate we should not expect to find such 

 simple organisms as bacteria and A turbo 1 still surviving. 

 This objection, which, of course, applies equally to other 

 theories of organic evolution, falls to the ground when 

 we consider that there must be many factors of which we 

 know nothing which may prevent the establishment of 

 progressive habits and render impossible the accumula- 

 tion of surplus energy. Many of the lower organisms, 

 like many human beings, appear to have an inherent in- 

 capacity for progress, though it may be quite impossible 

 for us to say to what that incapacity is due. 



It will be observed that in the foregoing remarks I 

 have concentrated attention upon the storing up of re- 

 serve material by the egg-cells, and in so doing have 

 avoided the troublesome question of the inheritance of 

 so-called acquired characters. I do not wish it to be 

 supposed, however, that I regard this as the only direc- 

 tion in which the law of the accumulation of surplus 

 energy can manifest itself, for I believe that the accu- 

 mulation of surplus energy by the body may be quite as 

 important as a factor in progressive evolution as the 

 corresponding process in the germ-cells themselves. 

 The parents, in the case of the higher animals, may sup- 

 ply surplus energy, in the form of nutriment or other- 

 wise, to the offspring at all stages of its development, 

 and the more capital the young animal receives the better 

 will be its chances in life, and the better those of its own 

 offspring. 



In all these processes, no doubt, natural selection plays 

 an important part, but, in dealing with the accumulation 

 of food material by the egg-cells, one of my objects has 

 been to show that progressive evolution would take place 



