process than the gradually-equivocal generation of variable inheritance hypothecated by the theory of transmutation. The sole matter of dispute between the two views is whether the life-cycles of organisms are circles or spirals. But all this, it will be said, is purely negative. Merely to refrain from any recourse to the extraordinary or the supernatural is by no means sufficient. “Natural explanations” must be explanatory as well as natural. Unless there be a simplification, a reduction of plurality to unity, a resolution of many particular problems into a common general problem, we have no explanation worthy of the name. Granting, therefore, that uniformitarian fixism does not recur to the anomalous or the miraculous, it still lies open to the charge of failing in its function as an explanation, because it multiplies origins in both space and time. Transformism, on the contrary, is said to elucidate matters, inasmuch as it unifies origins spatially and temporally. That transformism successfully plausibleizes a unification of origins in space, is true only in a limited and relative sense. The most that can be said for the assumption, that resemblances rest on the principle of common inheritance, is that it permits of a numerical reduction of origins, but this numerical reduction will, by an intrinsic necessity, always fall short of absolute unification. The monophyletic derivation of all organic forms from one primordial cell or protoblast is a fantastic dream, for which, from the very nature of things, natural science does not, and can not, furnish even the semblance of an objective basis. The ground is cut from under our feet, the moment we attempt to extend the principle of descent outside the limits of an organic phylum. The sole basis of inference is a group of uniformities, and, unless these uniformities predominate over the diversities, there can be no rational application of the principle of transformism. Hence, the hypothesis, that organisms are consanguineous notwithstanding their differences, loses all value as a solution at the point where resemblances are outweighed by diversities. The transmutation assumed to have taken place must be never so complete as to have obliterated all recognizable vestiges of the common ancestral type. “Whenever,” says Driesch, “the theory that, in spite of their diversities, the organisms are related by blood, is to be really useful for explanation, it must necessarily be assumed in every case that the steps of change, which have led the specific form A to become the specific form B, have been such as only to change in part that original form A. That is to say: the similarities between A and B must never be overshadowed by their diversities.” (“Science and Philosophy of the Organism,” v. I, p. 254.) When, therefore, the reverse is true and diversities are prevalent over uniformities, we are left without clue or compass in the midst of a labyrinth of innumerable possibilities.