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Updated: April 30, 2025
The Darwinians are hostile to Lamarck with his inner developing and perfecting principle, and, by the same token, to Aristotle, who is the father of the theory. They regard organic evolution as a purely mechanical process. Variation can work only upon a variable tendency an inherent impulse to development.
Galton, who compares the development of species with a many facetted spheroid tumbling over from one facet, or stable equilibrium, to another. The existence of internal conditions in animals corresponding with such facets is denied by pure Darwinians, but it is contended in this work, though not in this chapter, that something may also be said for their existence.
Who saw them go, or can point to analogous cases so conclusive as to compel assent from any equitable thinker? Darwinians of the stamp of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Professor Ray Lankester, or Mr. Romanes, insist on their pound of flesh in the matter of irrefragable demonstration.
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.
Apology is due for thus stating so elementary a distinction, but the statement is not superfluous, for confusion of thought, resulting from confounding together these very distinct things, is unfortunately far from uncommon. Thus some Darwinians assert that the germs of morality exist in brutes, and we have seen that Mr. Darwin himself speculates on the subject as regards the highest apes.
The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians died out.
Darwin himself died, the Darwinians of the sixties and seventies lost their pristine ardor, and many even went beyond Darwin. Above all, calm reflection took the place of excited enthusiasm. As a result it has become more and more apparent that the past forty years have brought to light nothing new that is of any value to the cause of Darwinism.
This result was by no means so exclusively due to Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species" as is commonly believed. During the thirty years that followed 1831 Lamarck's opinions made more way than Darwinians are willing to allow.
We shall do this briefly. The Darwinians start out to explain the causes of the "Origin of Species," with the statement that "no two individuals of the same species are exactly alike; each tends to vary." This is a self-evident fact, and is very properly used as a starting point for Variation.
Thus it happens that the positions taken by the Darwinians in reference to the ethical question are less varied than those taken by them in reference to the religious question.
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