122 



PROF. ERNEST W. MACBRIDE, F.R.S., ON 



how little serious investigation has really been done in this direction, 

 and doubtless the matter is not so simple. 



1 1 am experimenting with other plants because I am of the 

 opinion that it might be possible to obtain at least such new 

 varieties corresponding to the garden varieties. 



' But up to now the experiments have unfortunately not succeeded either 

 with myself or anyone else.'" (The italics are mine. A. W. S.) 



One word more. As Professor MacBride so clearly states, 

 Mendelism attributes varieties, not to inheritance of additional 

 acquired characters, but to the loss of some character or characters 

 originally possessed by the plant. Professor Bateson says (speaking as 

 one who had formerly been favourably disposed towards Darwinism) : 

 "We have to reverse our habitual modes of thought. At first it may seem 

 rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial form or forms of 

 protoplasm could have contained complexity enough to produce the 

 diverse types of life. But is it easier to imagine that these powers 

 could have been conveyed by extrinsic additions 1 " 



Now what does Mendelism in the mind of a Christian student 

 point to, or indicate? Surely that there is the strongest reason 

 possible, from present-day science, for us to maintain that the Bible 

 is correct in teaching that when created forms of life came from the 

 Creator's hand they did so in their present highly perfected forms 

 and not in the shapeless condition which " Darwinism " implies. 

 I do not say that Mendelians assert this, but that we may find in 

 Mendelism a very strong support for what the ordinary man has 

 always believed to be the teaching of the Bible. 



The Mendelian, as such, and the "Darwinian," as such, starts with 

 the assumption that the complex and highly developed forms of 

 life around us could not, or did not, commence existence as we 

 see them. Nevertheless " Mendelism " may be taken as indirectly con- 

 firmative of the Bible record, and not as destructive thereof, because 

 the evidences which it collects from the contemporary processes of 

 Nature all point to the fact that plants possessingorganic life have been 

 able to add nothing to that with which they were originally endowed. 



Professor MacBride : It is quite impossible for me to reply to 

 all the interesting criticisms made on my paper. 



One set of criticisms are of a type which I may call theological, 

 and another, which interests me still more, are genuine scientific 

 criticisms of the points put forward. May I remind the Society that 



