They took the train at night and they chatted as they went along in it.
Cæsar explained to Alzugaray the difficulties he had had to overcome
in order that the Workmen’s Club could be reinstituted, and went on
detailing his projects for the future.
“Do you believe the town is going to be transformed?” asked Alzugaray.
“Yes, certainly!” said Cæsar, staring at his friend.
“So then, you, a Darwinist who hold it as a scientific doctrine
that only the slow action of environment can transform species and
individuals, believe that a poor worn-out, jog-trotting race is going
to revive suddenly, in a few years! Can a Darwinist believe in a
revolutionizing miracle?”
“Previously, no; but now he can.”
“My dear fellow! How so?”
“Haven’t you read anything about the experiments of the Dutch botanist
Hugo de Vries?”
“No.”
“Well, his experiments have proved that there are certain vegetable
species which, all at once, without any preparation, without anything
to make you expect it, change type absolutely and take on other
characters.”
“The devil! That really is extraordinary.”
“Vries verified this rapid transformation first in a plant named
OEnotheria Lamarckiana, which, all of a sudden, with no influence from
the environment, with nothing to justify it, at times changes and
metamorphosizes itself into a different plant.”
“But this transformation may be due to a disease,” said Alzugaray.
“No, because the mutation, after taking place, persists from generation
to generation, not with pathological characteristics, but with
completely normal ones.”
“It is most curious.”
“These experiments have produced Neo-Darwinism. The Neo-Darwinists, with
Hugo de Vries at their head, believe that species are not generally
gradually transformed, but that they produce new forms in a sudden,
brusque way, having children different from the fathers. And if such
brusque variations can take place in a characteristic so fixed as
physiological form, what may not happen in a thing so unstable as the
manner of thinking? Thus, it is very possible that the men of the
Italian Renaissance or the French Revolution were mentally distinct from
their predecessors and their successors, and they may even have been
organically distinct.”
“But this overthrows the whole doctrine of evolution,” said Alzugaray.
“No. The only thing it has done is to distinguish two forms of change:
one, the slow variation already verified by everybody, the other the
brusque variation pointed out by Hugo de Vries. We see now that the
impulses, which in politics are called evolution and revolution, are
only reflexions of Nature’s movements.”
“So then, we may hope that Castro Duro will change into an Athens?”
asked Alzugaray.
“We may hope so,” said Cæsar.
“All right, let’s hope sleeping.”
They ordered the porter to prepare two berths in the car, and they both
lay down.