with the whole tribe of false doctors infest every part of the educational field. It is for the Universities to interpose themselves as a bulwark against the debasement of educational ideals at the will and pleasure of commercial instincts, or popular clamour, or utilitarian ambitions. The rendering of such a service demands a fidelity to principle, a constancy of policy, which it is unreasonable to require or to expect in a Government department, however able or well-intentioned. For Government departments are, and must be, the playthings of politics. Twice at least of recent years we have seen the Board of Education abruptly introduce, at the dictation of party clamour, drastic innovations upon their previous policy; on one occasion in regard to secondary schools, and on the other in regard to training colleges. The plain truth is that democracy at large cannot control education without destroying its real value; for when education becomes the mirror of popular standards, when the populace dictates its substance and aim, then it becomes impossible for education to lead the people to things above themselves. Precisely for that reason, a University, while ever zealous to help the people and to understand their aspirations, should never be subjected to merely popular control, or to the control of those who themselves are agents of the popular will. In brief, if University education is to help the people in their quest for enlightenment, the freedom and independence of Universities must at all costs be preserved.

The Universities are indeed the trustees of the mind. Their supreme duty is not to make the nation more wealthy or its public life more efficient, nor to delight it by lengthy lists of serviceable results, but rather to vindicate the dignity of thought, the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, and the training of character, and to protect these things against all attacks. They are at permanent warfare with all activity in education. which is not founded upon knowledge and principle, with all intellectual pretence, with all latitudinarian indifference, with all sharp opportunism, and with all educational huckstering. The true University is a living and energising body'; and as such it can never submit to that incubus of regulation, officialdom, and routine which more and more characterises both central and local administration and is slowly suppressing initiative and variety in English education. It is then for the sake of their own vitality, and for the sake of the welfare of national education in all its forms, that Universities must jealously guard their freedom and independence.

ART. IV. THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY.

1. The Laws of Heredity. By G. ARCHDALL REID. London: Methuen. 1910.

2. Mendel's Principles of Heredity. By W. BATESON. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1909. 3. Phases of Evolution and Heredity. London: Rebman, 1910,

IT

By DAVID Berry Hart.

T is an interesting question (as to how far the solution of a vexed problem is facilitated by the preliminary study of previous attempts to solve it. Most people, if asked offhand, would regard it as an axiom that the history of opinion on the subject they are studying must be of some value in advancing that study. Yet in many of the problems of science, and still more in the problems of philosophy, we are inclined to believe that correct solutions are more likely to be achieved by a mind coming fresh from the prevailing intellectual atmosphere of modern times than by one that is steeped in the heterogeneous mixture of truth and absurdity which emanated from a less scientific era. We would not, of course, suggest that historical studies are devoid of interest or value-far from it; but we would suggest that the most profitable attitude with which to approach them is rather that of the archæologist, whose opinions on modern problems are already formed, and whose interest in the past is purely abstract and impersonal, than that of the scientist who looks for new light on old questions. A chorus of dissent will no doubt greet this heretical proposition. Yet we think it can be supported on sound psychological grounds. We might urge, if we liked, that the history of opinions being mainly a history of errors, it would generally be an unremunerative investment of time to search over the masses of chaff for the few grains of wheat they may contain. But such is not our line of argument. We mean something much more positive than this. We mean that a mind encumbered with pre-existing theories of a subject is to that extent incapacitated from entertaining any theory that is new or out of relation to what has gone before. A mind that comes direct from a study of the past is likely to reach solutions of problems not widely different from the solutions of the past. But a mind whose only preparation is derived from immersion in the disciplined scientific atmosphere of the time is more likely to arrive at a solution on novel lines. Old conclusions

were wrong, usually because wrong questions were asked, false issues were raised. Whether the question is answered 'Yes' or 'No' matters little if the question is irrelevant. If the controversy of Free Will and Determinism had never been raised, its solution in these days could hardly have been asked. But since the issue has been raised, and a false antithesis fixed in the language with its obscurantist and question-begging terminology, the problem is one that is likely long to perplex intellects worthy of a higher destiny.

The common view of heredity is comprised in the detection of a resemblance between parents and offspring: human beings always give birth to human beings, not to fishes or amphibians; and each individual is apt to resemble his parents more than other members of the species. This, being the obvious, is assumed to be the significant, fact of heredity. As usual, fundamental importance is attributed to what is only an accessory appearance. It is of course perfectly true as far as it goes, but it does not and cannot go any farther.

Montaigne gives admirable expression to the ordinary point of view in his essay Of the resemblance betweene children ' and fathers':

What monster is it, that this teare or drop of seed, whereof we are ingendred brings with it; and in it the impressions, not only of the corporall forme, but even of the very thoughts and inclinations of our fathers? Where doth this droppe of water containe or lodge this infinite number of formes? And how beare they these resemblances, of so rash, and unruly a progresse, that the childes child shall be answerable to his grandfather, and the nephew to his uncle? In the family of Lepidus the Roman, there have been three, not successively, but some between, that were borne with one same eye covered with a cartilage or gristle. There was a race in Thebes, which from their mothers wombe, bear the forme of a burre, or yron of a launce; and such as had it not, were judged as misbegotten and deemed unlawfull. Aristotle reporteth of a certain nation, with whom all women were common, where children were allotted their fathers, only by their resemblances.'*

But in Montaigne's time, no glimmering was yet possible of the scientific conceptions which were destined to oust the popular views. Let us then try to forget all about our notions of heredity, and enter upon the discussion of this great mystery of living matter from an avenue altogether different.

There is a very general agreement among biologists that life no longer originates de novo upon the Earth. The theory of evolution certainly implies that at some period or other

inorganic matter became organic. That organic matter was no doubt far simpler and more elementary than any form of life which we have yet been able to discover. The lowest forms of life known to us, single-celled monads to which by courtesy the name of animal or plant is extended, all exhibit a variety of functions which lead us to believe that they themselves must be the product of aeons of previous evolution. They are of constant type, they often possess a nucleus or a contractile vacuole which at definite intervals empties itself; they have the power of the absorption and digestion of suitable food, and the rejection of matter that is unsuitable; their reproduction, by dividing in two, is well established as a property of their protoplasm. Clearly the gap between this and inorganic matter is a wide one, which must have been bridged over by innumerable intermediate forms of life now supposed to have vanished for ever.

Our earliest view of life, then, is that of minute protoplasmic particles, often showing great activity, absorbing a certain amount of nutriment, and then dividing into two. When each of these new beings has absorbed sufficient nutriment to grow to the standard size of the species, they again each undergo division. In this simple manner the numbers of the species are constantly replenished and increased to whatever limit the nature of the environment will allow. Now it is important to observe that with these lowly creatures there is no such thing as death. Immortality is characteristic of the group. Instead of dying when they have lived a certain term, they simply divide, and each portion commences life afresh. Of course we do not mean to deny that large numbers die from accidents or starvation-were it otherwise the world could not possibly contain them; but such death is an accident, and not due to any senility or diminished aptitude for life of the organism itself. Indeed, all existing organisms of the kind we are discussing have, so we must believe, descended from an unbroken line of ancestry reaching back to the time when the Earth had only lately emerged from the molten stage. In the whole of this ancestry, death has never occurred. The organism living to-day is not a different organism but the same organism as its progenitor millions of generations back; modified very likely in habits and appearance, but not in any sense a new individual. In these humblest forms of life, death has not yet made its appearance; and it has in consequence been suggested by certain biologists that death is an acquired character, having no immediate significance for the preservation of the species.

By and by, as ages roll on, our immortal organisms begin

to take on new functions. The continuous series of divisions is found to be broken occasionally by a new phenomenon. Two organisms, instead of going through the usual routine, meet one another and fuse together to form one organism. The creature thus produced appears to differ in no way from the rest of its kind. It begins to divide and re-divide in the orthodox manner just as if nothing had happened. This earliest form of sexual reproduction, it will be observed, in no wise interferes with the continued immortality of the individuals. Death has still not made its appearance. Very much later than the appearance of sexual reproduction,* a new change takes place. The division of the cell into its two daughter-cells is incomplete; and the two new individuals formed by the cleavage of the old, instead of going their ways separately, remain adherent. They each, however, go on dividing, as their nature is; and, the divisions being incomplete, a cluster or colony is formed. Such colonies we find among the sponges or hydrozoa, such as corals and zoophytes. They form the lowest class of the metazoa, or animals which consist of more than a single cell. As we trace the evolution of these animals down the river of time, we find further important changes taking place. At first, the organisms which had been incompletely separated retain their individualities unimpaired. Often indeed they must have escaped and gone off on their own account, to divide and re-divide as of old. But as the tendency to form colonies became more pronounced, various concomitant changes ensue. The adherent organisms begin to lose their separate individuality, and to become modified in various ways which, while rendering them unfit for a separate existence, make them more serviceable members of the community to which they belong. The modification is in the direction of increasing specialisation and differentiation of functions. Instead of each organism performing all the vital processes for itself, it tends more and more to perform only one, while relying upon the other organisms of the colony to perform for it the others. Some cells thus become modified for catching the food, others for digesting it, others for carrying it in proper quantities to the various members of the community, others for locomotion, and finally there are some cells-the basis of the whole-which go on dividing and re-dividing just as if nothing had happened, ever sending forth new individuals into the world, to found once more new colonies. As the various organisms slowly become more

*Sexual reproduction may have been present from the first-or, at all events, from the time when constancy of type was attained.