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Updated: May 3, 2025
I do not know of any proposition that has been put before us with the intention of explaining the phenomena of organic nature, which has in its favour a thousandth part of the evidence which may be adduced in favour of Mr. Darwin's views. Whatever may be the objections to his views, certainly all others are absolutely out of court. Take the Lamarckian hypothesis, for example.
There is no need to undertake the apparently impossible task of demonstrating an absolute negative. It will be enough to ask that the Lamarckian factor of use-inheritance shall be removed from the category of accredited factors of evolution to that of unnecessary and improbable hypotheses.
That the existing kinds of animals and plants, or many of them, may be derived from other and earlier kinds, in the lapse of time, is by no means a novel proposition. Not to speak of ancient speculations of the sort, it is the well-known Lamarckian theory.
Finally, in his later editions, he retreated indefinitely from his original position, edging always more and more continually towards the theory of his grandfather and Lamarck. These facts convince me that he was at no time a thorough- going Darwinian, but was throughout an unconscious Lamarckian, though ever anxious to conceal the fact alike from himself and from his readers. Not so with Mr.
Darwin must also have been imbued with Lamarckian ideas from other sources, although Dr. Grant's enthusiastic advocacy entirely failed to convert him to a belief in evolution.
If the alpine climate has done no more than produce a transitory change, it is clear that thousands of years do not, necessarily, cause constant and specific alterations. This requirement is one of the indispensable supports of the Lamarckian theory.
* See a paper read by Professor Bourne to the Zoological Section of the British Association, 1910. It must be understood that when I speak of Weismannism I do not refer to this whole theory of heredity, which, he acknowledges, has few supporters. The Lamarckian view is represented in Britain by Sir W. Turner and Professor Darwin.
Darwin just waved Lamarck aside, and said as little about him as he could, while in his earlier editions Erasmus Darwin and Buffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, at once raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcised. He said the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary."
Agassiz was such a wonderful teacher and so genial and so lovable a man that his opposition to evolution held back the advance of the Darwinian idea in America as Cuvier's influence had held back the Lamarckian idea in Europe. For the brilliant Cuvier simply laughed before his students at each "new folly" of Buffon and of Lamarck. Under this ridicule the influence of both men withered and died.
Are these mainly attributable to the inherited effects of use and disuse, supplemented by occasional sports and happy accidents? Or are they mainly due to sports and happy accidents, supplemented by occasional inherited effects of use and disuse? The Lamarckian system has all along been maintained by Mr.
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