244 LAMARCK AND DARWIN 



It would take too long to show in detail how a belief in 

 innate laws of evolution was held by the majority of Darwin's 

 critics. A few further examples must suffice. 



Richard Owen, who in IS68 1 admitted the possibility 

 of evolution, held that " a purposive route of development 

 and change, of correlation and interdependence, manifesting 

 intelligent Will, is as determinable in the succession of 

 races as in the development and organisation of the 

 individual. Generations do not vary accidentally, in any 

 and every direction ; but in pre-ordained, definite, and 

 correlated courses" (p. 808). 



He conceived change to have taken place by abrupt 

 variation, independent of environment and habit, by 

 " departures from parental type, probably sudden and 

 seemingly monstrous, but adapting the progeny inheriting 

 such modifications to higher purposes " (p. 797). He believed 

 spontaneous generation to be a phenomenon constantly 

 taking place, and constantly giving the possibility of new 

 lines of evolution. 



E. von Hartmann in his PJiilosopJiic ties Unbewussten 

 (1868) and in his valuable essay on Wahrheit tffnd Irrtum im 

 Dartvinismus (1874) criticised Darwinism in a most 

 suggestive manner from the vitalistic standpoint. He drew 

 attention to the importance of active adaptation, the 

 necessity for assuming definite and correlated variability, and 

 to the evidence for the existence of an immanent, purposive, 

 but unconscious principle of evolution, active as well in 

 phylogenetic as in individual development. 



In France H. Milne-Edwards' 2 stated the problem thus: 

 " In the present state of science, ought we to attribute to 

 modifications dependent on the action of known external 

 agents the differences in the organic types manifested by 

 the animals distributed over the surface of the globe either 

 at the present day, or in past geological ages? Or must the 

 origin of types transmissible by heredity be attributed to 

 causes of another order, to forces whose effects are not 

 apparent in the present state of things, to a creative power 



1 Anatomy of Vertebrates, iii., 1868. 



- Rapport sur les I'rogrcs rccents des Sciences zoologiques en France. 

 Paris, 1867. 



