DARWIN ON CORRELATION 241 



imply genetic affinity the more must the correlation of parts 

 come back into favour as a systematic principle. While 

 Darwin only, as it were, against his will, relied on the law 

 of correlation as a last resort when all other help failed, this 

 law must be regarded, from the standpoint of the orderly 

 inner determination of all organic form-change, as having 

 the rank of the highest principle of all, a principle which 

 rules parallel, divergent and convergent evolution " (pp. 47-8). 



Further on, following Radl, he characterises Darwin's 

 attitude to the law of correlation in these terms : " Darwin's 

 interest is entirely focussed on the variation, the function, 

 the causes of form-production, in short, upon evolution. 

 Accordingly he regards correlation essentially as correlative 

 variation in the sense of a departure from the given type. 

 W'ith morphological correlation in different types Darwin 

 troubles himself not at all, nor with correlation in the normal 

 development of a type " (p. 49). 



Cuvier's conception of the convenance des parties, essential 

 to all biology, remained on the whole foreign to Darwin's 

 thought, and to the thought of his successors. 



It was indeed one of their boasts that they had finally 

 eliminated all teleology from Nature. The great and 

 immediate success which Darwinism had among the younger 

 generation of biologists and among scientific men in general 

 was due in large part to the fact that it fitted in well with 

 the prevailing materialism of the day, and gave solid ground 

 for the hope that in time a complete mechanistic explanation 

 of life would be forthcoming. " Darvvinismus " became the 

 battle-cry of the militant spirits of that time. 



It was precisely this element in Darwinism that was 

 repugnant to most of Darwin's opponents, in whose ranks 

 were found the majority of the morphologists of the old 

 school. They found it impossible to believe that evolution 

 could have come about by fortuitous variation and fortuitous 

 selection ; they objected to Darwin that he had enunciated 

 no real Entwickelungsgesetz, or law governing evolution. 

 They were not unwilling to believe that evolution was a 

 real process, though many drew the line at the derivation of 

 man from apes, but they felt that if evolution had really taken 

 place, it must have been under the guidance of some principle 



