The only thing to do is to pluck them out root and
branch: they are as a cancer which, if the smallest fibre be left
unexcised, will grow again, and kill any system on to which it is
allowed to fasten. Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused if
he casts longing eyes towards Weismannism.
And what was Mr. Darwin's system? Who can make head or tail of the
inextricable muddle in which he left it? The "Origin of Species" in
its latest shape is the reduction of hedging to an absurdity. How
did Mr. Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of the last
edition of the "Origin of Species"? He wrote:-
"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have
thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during a
long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the
natural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable
variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of
the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner--that is,
in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present--by the
direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem
to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I
formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of
variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure
independently of natural selection.
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