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But assured as the doctrine of descent appears, and certain as it is that it has not only maintained its hold since Darwin’s day, but has strengthened it and has gained adherents, this foundation of Darwinism is nevertheless not the unanimous and inevitable conclusion of all scientific men in the sense and to the extent that the utterances of Weismann and others would lead us to suppose.
Darwin’s idea that all the causes of evolution were placed in a common progenitor, by a miraculous creation of that common progenitor is in very poor harmony with his denial of design in nature, and also in poor harmony with the idea of environments contributing so extensively to the change of species; for if all the causes were placed in a common progenitor, of course, they are not to be found in the least degree in environment.
To this category belong Darwin’s gemmules, Haeckel’s plastidules, Nägeli’s micellæ, Weismann’s labyrinth of ids, determinants, and biophors within the germ-plasm, and Roux’s ingenious hypothesis of the struggle of parts, which is an attempt to apply the Darwinian principle within the organism in order here also to rebut the teleological interpretation by giving a scientific one. Heredity.
Hilaire and Buffon; was in the field long before Charles Darwin’s time; was already in active conflict with the antagonistic theory of the “constancy of species,” and had its more or less decided adherents. Yet undoubtedly it was through and after Darwin that the theory grew so much more powerful and gained general acceptance. Darwinism and Teleology.
The naturalistic, “mechanical” interpretation of life was so much in the tenor of Darwin’s doctrine that it would have arisen out of it if it had not existed before.
These are represented by the names of workers belonging to a generation which has for the most part already passed away: Darwin’s collaborateurs, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently and simultaneously expounded the theory of natural selection, Haeckel and Fritz Müller, Nägeli and Askenasy, von Kölliker, Mivart, Romanes and others.
A. Fleischmann’s book, “Die Darwinsche Theorie,” is professedly only critical. He suggests no theory of his own as to the evolution of life in contrast to Darwin’s; for, as we have already seen in connection with his earlier book, “Die Deszendenztheorie,” he denies evolution altogether. His agnostic position is maintained, if possible, more resolutely than before. Natural science, according to him, must keep to facts. Drawing conclusions and spinning theories is inexact, and distracts from objective study. The Darwinian theory of selection seems to him a particularly good example of this, for it is built up
Darwin’s thinking follows the course that all anti-teleological thought has followed since the earliest times. In bringing forth the forms of life, nature offers, without choice or aim or intention, a wealth of possibilities. Thus arises adaptation at first in the rough, but gradually in more and more minute detail.
This diversity of standpoint, and the individual way in which each independent thinker reacts from the mechanical theory shows that here, as also in regard to Darwin’s theory of selection, we have to do with a dogmatic theory and a forced simplification of phenomena, not with an objective and calm consideration of things as they are. It is a theory where simplex has become sigillum falsi.
The most characteristic feature of Darwin’s theory was “natural teleology,” that is, the explanation of what is apparently full of purpose and plan in the world, purely as the necessary consequence of very simple conditions, without purpose or any striving after an aim.