elaboration that the outer and inner parts of these are necessarily subject to different conditions; and that the outer actions of air or water lead to the formation of integuments, and sometimes to other definite modifications of the surface, whence arise permanent differences of structure. Although in these cases also it is very difficult to determine how much is due to direct modification by external agencies transmitted and accumulated by inheritance, and how much to spontaneous variations accumulated by natural selection, the probabilities in favour of the former mode of action are here greater, because there is no differentiation of nutritive and reproductive cells in these simple organisms; and it can be readily seen that any change produced in the latter will almost certainly affect the next generation.[1] We are thus carried back almost to the origin of life, and can only vaguely speculate on what took place under conditions of which we know so little.
The American School of Evolutionists.
The tentative views of Mr. Spencer which we have just discussed, are carried much further, and attempts have been made to work them out in great detail, by many American naturalists, whose best representative is Dr. E.D. Cope of Philadelphia.[2] This school endeavours to explain all the chief modifications of form in the animal kingdom by fundamental laws of growth and the inherited effects of use and effort, returning, in fact, to the teachings of Lamarck as being at least equally important with those of Darwin.
The following extract will serve to show the high position claimed by this school as original discoverers, and as having made important additions to the theory of evolution:
"Wallace and Darwin have propounded as the cause of modification in descent their law of natural selection. This law has been epitomised by Spencer as the 'survival of the fittest.' This neat expression no doubt covers the case, but it leaves the origin of the fittest entirely untouched. Darwin assumes a 'tendency to variation' in nature, and it is plainly
