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Darwinism seems to me to be better expounded there than in the books of Darwin himself. The good Tourgueneff has sent me news from the depths of Scythia. He has found the information he wanted for a book that he is going to do. The tone of his letter is frivolous, from which I conclude that he is well. He will return to Paris in a month.
On the other hand, we have still to say a word concerning that which, on the part of those just described, is so strongly contested; namely, about the scientific worth of such a faith, and also about its reconcilableness with the Darwinism theories.
Darwin devotes nearly all his time to man's body and to the points at which the human frame approaches in structure though vastly different from the brute; the Bible emphasizes man's godlike qualities and the virtues which reflect the goodness of the Heavenly Father. Darwinism ends in self-destruction.
As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort of will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as self-control. Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value which Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in the long run.
Whether it be right or wrong in its physiological theories, its genealogical trees and fortuitous factors, preoccupation with this theory is a task of the second order. Nevertheless it is necessary to study it, because the chief objections to the religious interpretation of the world have come from it. The Development of Darwinism.
"It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more abstract and philosophical minds."
All this implies an admission of evolution and of descent, but a setting aside of Darwinism proper as an unsuccessful hypothesis, and a positive recognition of an endeavour after an aim, internal causes, and teleology in nature, as against fortuitous and superficial factors.
Very considerable latitude of opinion is allowed. Hence we find in the Transactions, papers for and against evolution, for and against Darwinism. It would be easy to quote extracts, pertinent to our subject, more than enough to fill a volume much larger than the present.
Eimer, on the other hand, is sharply antagonistic, especially to Weismann; he takes his proofs from the animal kingdom, and in the second volume of his large work already mentioned, which deals with the “orthogenesis of butterflies,” he attempts to set against the Darwinism “chance theory,” a proof of “definitely directed evolution,” and therefore of the “insufficiency of natural selection in the formation of species.”
If one accepts saltatory evolution, as for instance, Heer, Koelliker, and Wigand did long ago, then, as Grottewitz now discovers, the difficulty arising for Darwinism from the absence of the numerous intermediary forms which it postulates, naturally disappears. Grottewitz attributes sudden variation to the influence of environment, just as Geoffroy St. Hilaire had already done before Darwin.
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