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Updated: May 26, 2025
As soon as it comes in sight, however, certain persons take fright and turn aside or even turn back in order to avoid it. This was the case with Eimer, although perhaps in a lesser degree. This is sincerely to be deplored, since his theory would have gained in depth if he had but done full justice to the internal principle of development.
To designate the whole process as a growth, as Eimer does, really explains nothing, but merely defines more clearly the status of the problem. For, what do we know of the so-called process of growth? In truth, nothing, so that very little is gained by referring evolution to organic growth; the problem remains unsolved.
Eimer specially emphasizes four points in this connection: 1. Varieties are stages in the process of development, through which all the individuals of the respective species must pass. These points indicate how important for Eimer is the transmission of those characters which the parents themselves have acquired in the course of their own development.
Indeed, we do not see how otherwise to explain the likeness of structure of the eye in species that have not the same history. Where we differ from Eimer is in his claim that combinations of physical and chemical causes are enough to secure the result. We have tried to prove, on the contrary, by the example of the eye, that if there is "orthogenesis" here, a psychological cause intervenes.
Lamarck's theory of the use and disuse of organs and Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection are consequently pushed into the background. Here also Eimer at once places himself at variance with Naegeli who had enunciated a similar theory.
When the feast was ended, and the jeweled drinking-cups had gone merrily around the table, the bards sang, to the accompaniment of harps, the "Courtship of the Lady Eimer," and as they pictured her radiant beauty outshining that of all her maidens, the prince thought that fair as Lady Eimer was there was one still fairer.
Certain spiders assume a white, pink, or greenish “protective coloration” corresponding to the tinted blossom of the plants which they frequent, and so on. Eimer alleged that direct psychical factors co-operated in bringing about these changes. In any case, all this carries us far beyond the domain of mere naturalistic factors into the mystery of life itself.
Naegeli took as a starting point an inherent tendency in every being to perfect itself, thus presupposing an "inner principle of development," and making light of external influences as transforming causes. Eimer flatly contradicts this view. We shall revert to this point in our criticism of his theory.
Since the growth of the individual organism depends on this composition and on the external influences, Eimer compares family-development with it and designates the latter as "organic growth." In opposition to Naegeli he maintains that this "organic growth" does not always aim at perfection but often tends to simplification and retrogression.
One thing, however, of primary importance is evident from the investigations of Eimer, namely the proof that the same lines of development may be entered upon from entirely different starting-points, and that the number of these lines is limited.
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