the whole theory of
"development," "evolution," or "descent with modification." Volumes may
be written to adduce the details which warrant us in accepting it, and
to explain the causes which have brought it about, but I fail to see how
anything essential can be added to the theory itself, which is here so
well supported by Mr. Spencer, and which is exactly as Lamarck left it.
All that remains is to have a clear conception of the oneness of
personality between parents and offspring, of the eternity, and latency,
of memory, and of the unconsciousness with which habitual actions are
repeated, which last point, indeed, Mr. Spencer has himself touched
upon.

Mr. Spencer continues--"That by any series of changes a zoophyte should
ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology,
and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the
simplest and the most complex forms, when all intermediate forms are
examined, a very grotesque notion ... they never realize the fact that
by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in
time be generated. That surprise which they feel on finding one whom
they last saw as a boy, grown into a man, becomes incredulity when the
degree of change is greater. Nevertheless, abundant instances are at
hand of the mode in which we may pass to the most diverse forms by
insensible gradations."

Nothing can be more satisfactory and straightforward. I will make one
more quotation from this excellent article:--

"But the blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex
organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple
ones, becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms
are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably
in every respect--in bulk, in structure, in colour, in form, in specific
gravity, in chemical composition--differs so greatly that no visible
resemblance of any kind can be pointed out between them. Yet is the one
changed in the course of a few years into the other--changed so
gradually that at no moment can it be said, 'Now the seed ceases to be,
and the tree exists.' What can be more widely contrasted than a
newly-born child, and the small, semi-transparent gelatinous spherule
constituting the human ovum? The infant is so complex in structure that
a cyclopaedia is needed to describe its constituent parts. The germinal
vesicle is so simple, that a line will cont