“Darwinism”

Abstract

IT has now become to me a matter of amusement to note how those naturalists who of late years have drifted most widely from the doctrines of evolution as these were held by Darwin, habitually accuse me of Darwinian heresy because I have not seen any adequate reason to depart from those doctrines in their entirety. Perceiving that there has been some change of relative position, while failing to perceive that the movement has been altogether on their own side, these naturalists represent that I have been falling away from Darwinism, when the fact is that they have been advancing beyond anything that was ever countenanced by the judgment of Darwin—and even expressly accepting the view which he so vehemently rejected, viz. that of regarding natural selection as the sole cause of organic evolution. Thus, for example, when in NATURE of October 10 (p. 569) Prof. Ray Lankester gravely designates my paper on physiological selection a “laborious attack upon Darwin's theory of the origin of species,” it becomes evident how fast and far he has travelled from his Darwinism of two or three years ago. For, to put it briefly, unless it can be shown that Darwin considered natural selection the only possible cause of organic evolution, and did not consider sterility between allied species as probably due to some other principle of change, it is obvious that there can be nothing in my “additional suggestion on the origin of species” which may in any sense be designated an attack upon the distinctively Darwinian theory. Yet it is with regard to these very points that the opinion of Darwin was steadily opposed to that of Wallace; i.e. to the present opinion of Lankester. Therefore, quite apart from any question touching the truth of this “additional suggestion” or “supplementary hypothesis” (which, however, I may here parenthetically remark, will soon be shown to be in no way seriously affected by Mr. Wallace's sole remaining criticism), it is sufficiently evident that, when the object of publishing the hypothesis was expressly and repeatedly stated to have been that of meeting the main difficulties which had been advanced against the theory of natural selection, the present designation of this hypothesis as an elaborate attack upon that theory is simply absurd.