OCR Rendition - approximate

CRAP. ni.]   ORGANIC STABILITY.   19

apparently exhaust all reasonable possibilities : first, that in which each element selects its most suitable immediate neighbourhood, in accordance with the guiding idea in Darwin's theory of Pangenesis ; secondly, that of more or less general co-ordination of the influences exerted on each element, not only by its immediate neighbours, but by many or most of the others as well ; finally, that of accident or chance, under which name a group of agencies are to be comprehended, diverse in character and alike only in the fact that their influence on the settlement of each particle was not immediately directed towards that end. In philosophical language we say that such agencies are not purposive, or that they are not teleological ; in popular language they are called accidents or chances.

Filial Relation.-A conviction that inheritance is mainly particulate and much influenced by chance, greatly affects our idea of kinship and makes us consider the parental and filial relation to be curiously circuitous. It appears that there is no direct hereditary relation between the personal parents and the personal child, except perhaps through little-known. channels of secondary importance, but that the main line of hereditary connection unites the sets of elements out of which the personal parents had been evolved with the set out of which the personal child was evolved. The main line may be rudely likened to the chain of a necklace, and the personalities to pendants attached to its links. We are unable to see the particles and

c 2