The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 · Herbert Spencer
GENESIS, HEREDITY, AND VARIATION.
To the like causes are also ascribable the phenomena of Variation. These are unobtrusive while the tolerably-uniform conditions of a species maintain tolerable uniformity among the physiological units of its members; but they become obtrusive when differences of conditions, entailing considerable functional differences, have entailed decided differences among the physiological units, and when the different physiological units, differently mingled in every individual, come to be variously segregated and variously combined. Did space permit, it might be shown that this hypothesis is a key to many further facts--to the fact that mixed races are comparatively plastic under new conditions; to the fact that pure races show predominant influences in the offspring when crossed with mixed races; to the fact that while mixed breeds are often of larger growth, pure breeds are the more hardy--have functions less-easily thrown out of balance. But without further argument it will, I think, be admitted that the power of this hypothesis to explain so many phenomena, and to bring under a common bond phenomena which seem so little allied, is strong evidence of its truth. And such evidence gains greatly in strength on observing that this hypothesis brings the facts of Genesis, Heredity, and Variation into harmony with first principles. We see that these plastic physiological units, which we find ourselves obliged to assume, are just such more integrated, more heterogeneous, more unstable, and more multiform molecules, as would result from continuance of the steps through which organic matter is reached. We see that the differentiations of them assumed to occur in differently-conditioned aggregates, and the equilibrations of them assumed to occur in aggregates which maintain constant conditions, are but corollaries from those universal principles implied by the persistence of force. We see that the maintenance of life in the successive generations of a species, becomes a consequence of the continual incidence of new forces on the species, to replace the forces that are ever being rhythmically equilibrated in the propagation of the species. And we thus see that these apparently-exceptional phenomena displayed in the multiplication of organic beings, fall into their places as results of the general laws of Evolution. We have, therefore, weighty reasons for entertaining the hypothesis which affords us this interpretation.
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