Hypothecation

“ In the hypotheca, the property does not pass to the creditor, nor does he get possession, but he acquires a preferential right to have his debt paid out of the hypothecated property; that is, he can sell it and pay himself out of the proceeds, or in default of a purchaser he can become the owner himself. The name and the principle have passed into the law of Scotland, which distinguishes between conventional hypothecs, as bottomry and respondentia, and tacit hypothecs established by law. ”

“ We believe this same principle not only harmonizes with, but is nothing more nor less than a great general law of increase, based upon the perfectionism of all organization and harmony of function; and what are denominated "laws of variation" may be explained by the laws of hereditary descent. When we take into consideration the fact that the true law of propagation is based upon a perfect standard in nature, all changes or deviations from that standard or model result from what are properly called laws of inheritance. ”

“ For the most part, all that can be attained is probability, especially in speculative matters, such as estimates of time, explanations of formation, and theories of causation. As in exegesis, so in geology, all hypotheses ought to be counted merely tentative, maintained with modesty, and held open at every point to revision and reconstruction. The necessity of caution and reserve needs no enforcing for any one who knows the variety and inconsistency of the phases through which speculative geology has passed in our own generation. ”

“ So, many biologists argue, why have two explanations when one is sufficient, especially when the other has never been conclusively established as true in any case and is obviously untrue in certain test cases? The attitude of most investigators is that of the open mind. While feeling that the weight of probability is very decidedly against the theory of the inheritance of somatic modifications, they still stand ready and willing to accept any evidence in its favor which when weighed in the balance is not found wanting. ”

“ Now, before we examine the numerous, and in some cases most interesting and important, laws of transmission by inheritance, let us make ourselves acquainted with the actual nature of the process. The phenomena of transmission by inheritance are generally looked upon as something quite mysterious, as peculiar processes which cannot be fathomed by natural science, and the causes and actual nature of which cannot be understood. It is precisely in such a case that people very generally assume supernatural influences. ”

“ The highest certainty is that which arises from concordance of the presumptions suggested by all methods, and it is always prudent to try every variation by both kinds of Internal Evidence of Readings. The uncertainty however inherent in both, as dependent on isolated acts of individual judgement, renders them on the whole untrustworthy against a concurrence of Genealogy and Internal Evidence of Documents; though a concurrence of clear Intrinsic with clear Transcriptional Probability ought certainly to raise at least a provisional doubt. ”

“ The problems included in a study of organic evolution are essentially physiological, and the elucidation of the mechanism and action of heredity by which qualities, characters and capacities are transmitted from generation to generation may lie accomplished only by accurate observations and experimental tests with active or living material. The examination of preserved material not in hereditary series, or the wide generalizations derived from geographic studies, may not contribute to the progress of exact knowledge of genetics, or methods and manner of inheritance. ”

“ It is not, therefore, enough for us that the laws of space, which are only laws of simultaneous phenomena, and the laws of number, which though true of successive phenomena do not relate to their succession, possess the rigorous certainty and universality of which we are in search. We must endeavour to find some law of succession which has those same attributes, and is therefore fit to be made the foundation of processes for discovering, and of a test for verifying, all other uniformities of succession. ”

“ If, under “heredity,” we comprise the totality of inheritance—that is to say, the physical constitution of a species at any time, and therefore the restricted and, in the foregoing sense, pre-determined power of variation, whilst under “adaptation” we comprehend the direct and indirect response of this physical constitution to the changes116 in the conditions of life, I can agree with Haeckel’s mode of expression, and with him trace the transformation of species to the two factors of heredity and adaptation. ”

“ The laws of Inheritance and Adaptation are universally acknowledged physiological facts, the former traceable to propagation, the latter to the nutrition of organisms. On the other hand, the struggle for existence is a biological fact, which with mathematical necessity follows from the general disproportion between the average number of organic individuals and the numerical excess of their germs. ”

“ On other views of inheritance, there would be required for prediction knowledge not only of the immediate parents but of the whole line of ancestry, with the result that prediction could reach only some degree of probability for any single individual and be accurate only for the average of a sufficient number of individuals. ”

“ As regards the hypothesis of creation, little need be said. From a scientific point of view, the adoption of this speculation is the same thing as an admission that the problem is not susceptible of solution. Moreover, the proposition that a given thing has been created, whether true or false, is not capable of proof. By the nature of the case direct evidence of the fact is not obtainable. The only indirect evidence is such as amounts to proof that natural agencies are incompetent to cause the existence of the thing in question. ”

“ When any deviation of structure often appears, and we see it in the father and child, we cannot tell whether it may not be due to the same cause having acted on both; but when among individuals, apparently exposed to the same conditions, any very rare deviation, due to some extraordinary combination of circumstances, appears in the parent — say, once among several million individuals — and it reappears in the child, the mere doctrine of chances almost compels us to attribute its reappearance to inheritance. ”

“ Until that law could be connected with the psychological and ethological laws on which it must depend, and, by the consilience of deduction a priori with historical evidence, could be converted from an empirical law into a scientific one, it could not be relied on for the prediction of future events, beyond, at most, strictly adjacent cases. ”

“ The considerations, which, as I apprehend, give, at the present day, to the proof of the law of uniformity of succession as true of all phenomena without exception, this character of completeness and conclusiveness, are the following: First, that we now know it directly to be true of far the greatest number of phenomena; that there are none of which we know it not to be true, the utmost that can be said being, that of some we can not positively from direct evidence affirm its truth ”

“ Every new speculator may invent a fresh genealogy of emanations in his theory of creation, and may make it any length that he pleases. If hypotheses need never be verified,—need not even be capable of verification,—one may go on constructing them ad infinitum. ”

“ It will be seen that a hereditary property, though it must belong to all the finite numbers greater than a given number possessing the property, need not belong to all the numbers less than this number. For example, the hereditary property of being greater than 99 belongs to 100 and all greater numbers, but not to any smaller number. ”

“ If in any measure reasonable, such persons ought rather to examine their title to such a belief; and even if they disregard the consensus of testimony which is yielded by all the biological sciences to the theory of evolution, they ought at least to hold their judgment in suspense until they shall have not only set against the apparently negative testimony which is yielded by geology its unquestionably positive testimony, but also well considered the causes which may—or rather must—have so gravely impaired the geological record. ”

“ No example can be pointed out, in the whole history of science, so far as I am aware, in which this Consilience of Inductions has given testimony in favour of an hypothesis afterwards discovered to be false. If we take one class of facts only, knowing the law which they follow, we may construct an hypothesis, or perhaps several, which may represent them: and as new circumstances are discovered, we may often adjust the hypothesis so as to correspond to these also. ”

“ If we are really bent on scientifically investigating the question of heredity, we are obliged perforce to form from the observed facts of heredity a highly detailed and {9}elaborate theory, on the basis of which we can propound new questions, which will give rise in turn to new facts, and thus will exercise a retroactive influence on the theory, improving and transforming it. ”

“ The fact is, we can make no show of accounting for the complex phenomena of heredity with mere material units; we can never reach these phenomena from below, but must begin farther up and make the assumption of vital units and hereditary units, if there is to be any advance in this field. ”

“ Man, the late-comer, not having been present at the birth of organic forms, can give no reliable testimony regarding their parentage. In like manner, no a priori proof from the process of inheritance is available, because heredity, as revealed to us by the experimental science of Genetics, can account for specific resemblances only, and cannot be invoked, at present, as an empirically tested explanation for generic, ordinal, or phyletic resemblances. It has still to be demonstrated experimentally that the hereditary process is transcendental to limits imposed by specific differentiation. ”

“ The laws of Inheritance, which we have just discussed, as well as the laws of Adaptation, which we shall consider directly, in reality form only a small portion of the phenomena existing in this domain, but which have not as yet been investigated; and since every one of these laws can interact with every other, it is clear that there is an infinite complication of physiological actions, which are at work in the construction of organisms. ”

“ The leading opponents of spontaneous generation seem to oppose the doctrine only provisionally, on the ground that the evidence accumulated is not sufficient to warrant a final decision. The weight of evidence, however, seems to lend probability to the doctrine. ”

“ It seems to me that in this case we can draw more prudent conclusions from the general facts of inheritance than from the results of experiments that are neither quite clear nor undubious, although in themselves they are most valuable, and deserve the most careful consideration. ”

“ In a word, the theory of heredity, which seeks to strip inheritance of its uniqueness as a vital process by identifying it with the more general physicochemical processes occurring in the organism, is a groundless speculation, that, far from explaining, flouts the very observational data which it pretends to elucidate. ”

“ This law must be in the strictest and highest sense scientific, and when correctly understood, it will unlock many secrets and solve many problems which have resisted the power of the scientist and the theologian, and which cannot be solved from a natural point of view. All the facts which the scientist has accumulated with so much industry and patient observation testify to the existence of this law of heredity, and when rightly understood, confirm it. The principle accounts for all the facts ”

“ So that the Practice of the two latter doth arise from the Errors or Incertainties of the former. Were the Titles of Lands once made certain (which they may be by a Registry, and no otherwise) I know what I think of the future Gains of the Law: The profit of the Law arises from the Incertainty of Property, and therefore as Property is more reduced to a certainty, the profit of the Law must be reduced with it, the Fall of the one must be the Rising of the other. ”

“ The exposition of the doctrine of germinal continuity, (b) More precise investigation of the material basis of inheritance, (c) Suspicions regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics, (d) Application of statistical methods which have led to the formulation of the law of ancestral heredity." We shall take these up in order.
Exposition of the Doctrine of Germinal Continuity.—From parent to offspring there passes some hereditary substance; although small in amount, it is the only living thread that connects one generation with another. ”

“ Whether the known and admitted imperfections of the geological and palæontological records are sufficiently serious to account satisfactorily for the deficiency of direct evidence recognisable in some modern hypotheses, may be a matter of individual opinion. There can, however, be little doubt that they are sufficiently extensive to throw the balance of evidence decisively in favour of some theory of continuity, as opposed to any theory of intermittent and occasional action. ”

“ Thus at the moment we are in the full flood of the chemical theory which is employed to explain inheritance. That heredity exists we all know, but so far we know nothing about its mechanism. Darwin, with "Pangenesis," and others, using other titles, argued in favour of a "particulate" explanation, but the number of particles which would be necessary to account for the phenomena involved, this and other difficulties, have practically put this explanation out of court. ”

“ It is true that thus far this method has not been applied for series of generations, and under conditions in which a considerable change of environment has taken place, and we look forward to a definite solution of the problem of the effect of heredity and of environment through the application of this method. In the study of past generations we cannot, on the whole, compare directly parent and offspring, but we have to confine ourselves to a comparison between the occurrence of types during successive periods. ”