148 The Philippine Journal of Science uu 



thirty years it has been accepted as truth so definitely established 

 and generally accepted that any evidence, that is subject to con- 

 struction as impairing its validity, attracts an undue amount 

 of attention for this reason alone, and is likely to be accepted 

 by those to whom the novel appeals with special force, and by 

 others who may have escaped thorough grounding in the 

 evidence for natural selection. The latter class is a larger one 

 than it was some time ago, because the practically universal 

 acceptance of natural selection has seemed to make unnecessary 

 the presentation of evidence for it with the thoroughness 

 that was customary when it was a subject of dispute, or while 

 it also made an appeal on the basis of novelty. As examples 

 of ideas that have made their appeal largely on the basis of 

 their assumed value as evidence against natural selection, there 

 may be mentioned the determinate variation heresy based on 

 geological evidence, and the mutation idea, when extended be- 

 yond its author's intention and construed as having any relation 

 to the validity of the natural-selection principle. 



In general, such attacks attract little or no attention from those 

 whose belief in natural selection is thoroughly grounded, for the 

 reason that the iteration of familiar truth is not always wel- 

 comed, and that in general, any argument against a principle 

 that seems to those who appreciate it to be absolutely unassail- 

 able, seems hardly worth replying to. In spite of these two 

 ideas, it seems to me that, for the sake of economy itself, it 

 is occasionally worth while to defend a principle even as widely 

 accepted as that of natural selection, for the simple reason that 

 intelligent but unqualified acceptance of really fundamental 

 principles is always conducive to the efficiency of investigation, 

 and that if scientific heresy be too completely ignored, the 

 weakening of real scientific foundations may reach a troublesome 

 point. Therefore, at the risk of placing myself in the un- 

 popular position of an Aristides, I expressed myself publicly 

 regarding the unreasonable application of the mutation theory, 

 while it was new. Too little attention to this and other similar 

 publications about the same time and the continued entertain- 

 ment of the novelty of an idea that could be entertained as 

 in opposition to natural selection have let the errors grow and 

 have recently justified the publication of more careful and ex- 

 tensive work in contradiction of the same kind. 



There comes now Dr. John C. Willis, who, as an excellent 

 botanist, has accumulated a mass of throughly established and 

 very interesting information — valuable if properly construed as 

 collateral evidence on the general principle of natural selection, 



