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In admitting use and disuse as freely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow of a system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunate accidents.
In regard to the issue between the Lamarckians and Weismannists whether changes acquired by the parent are inherited by the young recent experiments again suggest something of a compromise.
Lamarckians and Darwinians, who still made so much noise in the world, ignored him; and no one came now to open the gate behind which was ageing, in obscurity and deserted, "one of the loftiest and purest geniuses which the civilized world at that moment possessed; one of the most learned naturalists and one of the most marvellous of poets in the modern and truly legitimate sense of the word."
It hardly need be added that if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms.
The world at large, again, needs not to be told that the normal course is not unfrequently deflected through the fortunes of war; nevertheless, according to Lamarckians and Erasmus-Darwinians, habitual effort, guided by ever- growing intelligence that is to say, by continued increase of power in the matter of knowing our likes and dislikes has been so much the main factor throughout the course of organic development, that the rest, though not lost sight of, may be allowed to go without saying.
In admitting use and disuse as freely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow of a system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunate accidents.
Now let me return to the recent division of biological opinion into two main streams Lamarckism and Weismannism Both Lamarckians and Weismannists, not to mention mankind in general, admit that the better adapted to its surroundings a living form may be, the more likely it is to outbreed its compeers.
It will be seen that the language used in this volume is not the particular language of any one of these schools. * Of recent years another compromise has been proposed between the Lamarckians and Weismannists.
The world at large, again, needs not to be told that the normal course is not unfrequently deflected through the fortunes of war; nevertheless, according to Lamarckians and Erasmus-Darwinians, habitual effort, guided by ever-growing intelligence that is to say, by continued increase of power in the matter of knowing our likes and dislikes has been so much the main factor throughout the course of organic development, that the rest, though not lost sight of, may be allowed to go without saying.
I have pointed out elsewhere that the British nation does not consist of atheists and Plymouth Brothers; and I am not now going to pretend that it ever consisted of Darwinians and Lamarckians. The average citizen is irreligious and unscientific: you talk to him about cricket and golf, market prices and party politics, not about evolution and relativity, transubstantiation and predestination.
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