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One plant in each hundred may mutate, and cultures of less than a hundred specimens must therefore be entirely dependent on chance for the appearance of new forms, even if such should accidentally have been produced and lay dormant in the seed. In other cases mutations may be more numerous, or on the contrary, more rare.
Slowly but surely we are lapsing into Bullo-doodledom, with a momentary preponderance of Bull. Tempora do, I entreat you, allow me the use of my solitary dear delightful old bit of Latin mutantur; ay! and we mutate with them. The world moves, and no amount of Haul-back will stay it.
Glancing at clothed buttocks, covered thighs, and other appendages of a female here and a male there, it was as though his constitution could mutate from solid to vapor at random despite human will.
How much more could he tolerate all this: these prodigious moments of fighting the pull of sleep; people rift from him; increasing age transporting him further and further from the sensitive child whom he once was, a sheen of innocence that he once had and could have maintained to some degree had there not been a need to survive on the streets and to rise above them economically; his naïve wish to be loved; and his hunger to use others for sexual gratification, all of which compelled him to mutate a groping primate of sorts dangling on a limb to avoid putting his feet directly on the sordid ground, as if that which he garnered from the earth, his money, were clean.
The mutation theory of De Vries is a much more convincing theory of the origin of species than is Darwin's Natural Selection. If things would only mutate a little oftener! But they seem very reluctant to do so. There does seem to have been some mutation among plants, De Vries has discovered several such, but in animal life where are the mutants?
It is quite obvious that Oenothera lamarckiana was in a mutating condition when I first saw it, seventeen years ago. How long had it been so? Had it commenced to mutate after its introduction into Europe, some time ago, or was it already previously in this state? It is as yet impossible to decide this point.
But it seems probable, and is especially proved in the case of the evening-primroses, that all or the majority of the representatives of the whole strain have the same tendency to mutate.
Indeed, if it should once become possible to bring plants to mutate at our will and perhaps even in arbitrarily chosen directions, there is no limit to the power we may finally hope to gain over nature. What is to guide us in this new line of work? Is it the minute inspection of the features of the process in the case of the evening-primroses?
No philosophy or religion can afford to be anthropocentric merely. It must include all life and all living things to which we are blood-related. There are other species or latent species to take up the torch that burned poor homo sapiens and ascend the heights. The ant and bee may yet mutate along certain lines that would make them the masters of the universe.
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