Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/213

Rh was the part through which nutritive matters were taken in and through which were absorbed and exhaled, oxygen and carbonic acid. Its outer surface was the part which now touched quiescent masses, and now received the collisions consequent on its own motions or the motions of others similarly carried along by their cilia. Its outer surface was the part to receive the sound-vibrations occasionally propagated through the water; the part to be affected more strongly than any other by those variations in the amounts of light caused by the passing of small bodies close to it; and the part which met those diffused molecules constituting odours. That is to say, at the outset the surface was the part on which there fell the various influences pervading the environment, through which there passed the materials for growth furnished by the environment, by which there were received those impressions from the environment serving for the guidance of actions, and which had to bear the mechanical re-actions consequent upon such actions. Necessarily, therefore, the surface was the part in which were initiated the various instrumentalities for carrying on intercourse with the environment. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that such instrumentalities arose internally where they could neither be operated on by surrounding agencies nor operate on them,—where the differentiating forces did not come into play, and the differentiated structures had nothing to do; and it is to suppose that meanwhile the parts directly exposed to the differentiating forces remained unchanged. Clearly, then, organization could not but begin on the surface; and having thus begun, its subsequent course could not but be determined by its superficial origin. And hence these remarkable facts showing us that individual evolution is accomplished by successive in-foldings and in-growings. Doubtless natural selection soon came into action, as, for example, in the removal of the rudimentary nervous centres from the surface; since an individual in which they were a little more deeply seated would be less likely to be incapacitated by injury of them. And so in multitudinous other ways. But nevertheless, as we here see, natural selection could operate only under subjection: it could do no more than take advantage of those structural changes which the medium and its contents initiated.

See, then, how large has been the part played by this primordial factor. Had it done no more than give to Protozoa and Protophyta that cell-form which characterizes them—had it done no more than entail the cellular composition which is so remarkable a trait of Metazoa and Metaphyta—had it done no more than cause the repetition in all visible animals and plants of that primary differentiation of outer from inner which it first wrought in animals and plants invisible to the naked eye; it would have done much towards giving to organisms of all kinds certain leading traits. But it has done more than this. By causing the first differentiations of those clusters of units out of which visible animals in general arose, it fixed the starting place