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Updated: May 26, 2025
In opposition to the theory of selection, Eimer lays special stress on the fact that its underlying assumption, viz., fortuitous, indefinite variation in many different directions, is entirely devoid of foundation in fact, and that selection, in order to be effective, postulates the previous existence of the required useful characters, whereas the very point at issue is to explain how these characters have originated.
In good years the vintage of Tokay may be estimated at something like 150,000 eimers, an eimer being about two and a half gallons; but a really good year is the exception, not the rule. The season of 1876 was a complete failure; a disastrous frost on the 19th of May in that year completely destroyed the hopes and prospects of the vine-grower.
We should thus arrive at a demonstration of what Eimer called orthogenesis, or evolution in definite directions. The mutation lata cannot be said to breed true, as the pollen is almost entirely sterile. It has therefore been propagated by crossing with Lamarckiana pollen, with the result that both forms are obtained with lata varying in proportion from 4 per cent. to 45 per cent.
Of course, Eimer could not but in his turn burn incense before Darwin by declaring that he would not dare to cross swords with such a man, while in reality he repudiates all of Darwin's fundamental tenets.
Climate, nourishment, etc., affect the inner structure, the plasm, transform it and thus produce variation which is transmitted to the progeny. But, however great may be the influence of environment, Eimer seems to overestimate it. Indeed, the analogy of "growth" should have led Eimer to a conception of the true relation between "internal" and "external" causes.
Eimer is too much inclined towards the other extreme; he does not admit the existence of adaptive-morphological characteristics. Viewed in this aspect, his repudiation of mimicry may perhaps also seem somewhat harsh and one-sided. In this narrowness of view must also be sought the reason for his complete repudiation of Naegeli's principle of perfection.
Herbert Spencer, Theodor Eimer, Lester Ward, Hering, and Zehnder have pointed out the untenable consequences of this position. I hold, with Lamarck and Darwin, that the hereditary transmission of acquired characters is one of the most important phenomena in biology, and is proved by thousands of morphological and physiological experiences.
It is of special significance that the characters of the more advanced sex frequently correspond to those of a related, superior species, and occasionally to those of widely separated species. Eimer endeavors to explain male predominance "by a more delicate and more developed, i.e., more complex, chemico-physical organization of the male organism."
It appears as if the internal principle of development were losing influence and significance with Eimer; but the ulterior reason for this is not far to seek. Whoever recognizes the validity of the internal principle of development, eliminates chance, that stop-gap of materialism, from evolution, and is lead at once to a supreme Intelligence which directs evolution.
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.”
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