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Eimer speaks of the impotence of natural selection, Weismann of its omnipotence. All this has shaken men's confidence in the trustworthiness of the Darwinian principles. This fact we are in no way inclined to doubt, but we must again differ from Wagner with regard to its significance.
And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand.
Because of the abundance of evidential facts Weismann does not go into any detailed proof of evolution. “One can hardly take up any work, large or small, on the finer or more general structural relations, or on the development of any animal, without finding in it proofs for the evolution theory.”
To fix this chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the July revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the Tenth. Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great event? said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames.
Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as a byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Nature without seeing how hot the contention is between his followers and those of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to growing perception that Mr. Darwin should either have gone farther towards Lamarckism or not so far.
Having now made the reader acquainted with the position taken by the leading Charles-Darwinian authorities, I will return to Professor Weismann himself, who declares that the transmission of acquired characters "at first sight certainly seems necessary," and that "it appears rash to attempt to dispense with its aid." He continues:
And his own God was distant and dubious, and nothing that modern science had taught him was yet registered in his organism. Could he even transmit it to descendants? What was it Weismann said about acquired characteristics? No, certain races put forth certain beliefs, and till you killed off the races, you could never kill off the beliefs.
That Professor Weismann recognizes the vital importance to his own theory of the question whether or no mutilations can be transmitted under any circumstances, is evident from a passage on p. 425 of his work, on which he says: "It can hardly be doubted that mutilations are acquired characters; they do not arise from any tendency contained in the germ, but are merely the reaction of the body under certain external influences.
The inheritance of acquired characters is denied, not only by thorough opponents of evolution, but even by scientists who admit it and have contributed a good deal to its establishment, especially Weismann, Galton, Ray Lankester, etc. Since 1884 the chief opponent has been August Weismann, who has rendered the greatest service in the development of Darwin's theory of selection.
Led by the German biologist, Weismann, they would thrust the Lamarckians, with their hypothesis of use-inheritance, clean out of the field. Spontaneous variation, they assert, is all that is needed to prepare the way for the selection of the tall giraffe. It happened to be born that way. In other words, its parents had it in them to breed it so.
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