THE 
NEW PHYTOLOGIST 
Vol. XXII, No. 4 29 September, 1923 
VARIATION AS AN ORGANIC FUNCTION 
By C. W. SOAL, B.A. 
I. Many controversies have centred round the relative importance 
of the various “organismal” and “environmental” factors in evolu¬ 
tion, the Lamarckian and mutationist theories differing markedly in 
this respect. It is suggested in this paper that these differences are 
due in part to certain limitations in the more fundamental concepts 
of current biology, and that an alternative and perhaps more empirical 
method of approaching the subject may tend to eliminate them. 
The biologist customarily regards the organism as a material 
structure, comprising an aggregate of characters, which is more or 
less sharply defined spatially from the rest of the material universe 
or environment by virtue of its peculiar properties. It is usual more¬ 
over, for physiological reasons, to associate these properties more 
closely with a definite portion of its structure—the protoplasts of 
the cells. The organism thus becomes, as it were, a skeleton of “living” 
matter surrounded by an unspecialised “primary” environment and 
interpenetrated by a specialised “ secondary ” environment—the non¬ 
living cell-sap, lymph, cell-walls, etc.—a conception which, while 
pushing back further the dualism between organism and environ¬ 
ment, does not resolve it. Both these assumptions are however 
purely arbitrary conveniences. During the organism’s life there is a 
constant flux of matter through various physiological channels. The 
protoplasts are also themselves organised structures, being differ¬ 
entiated into cytoplasm, chromosomes, etc., and these in turn into 
a variety of chemical substances variously distributed, some of which 
at least are common to other parts of the organism, or even to the 
primary environment. There is no logical reason, therefore, why the 
process of localisation should not be carried further by the postula¬ 
tion of subordinate centres of activity within the cell interpenetrated 
by a “tertiary” environment, and so on indefinitely. 
Phyt. XXII. 4. 
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