282 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



differences as to histology, but are to a much more important 

 degree, differences of organisation proper, that is, of the 

 arrangement of parts, in the widest sense of the word. 1 



Would it be possible to interpret the origin of this 

 sort of systematic diversities by a reasoning similar to that 

 by which we have understood, at least hypothetically, 

 congenital adaptedness ? 



Dogmatic Lamarckism, we know, uses two principles as 

 its foundations ; one of them, adaptation and its inheritance, 

 we have studied with what may be called a partly positive 

 result. The other is the supposed faculty of the organism 

 to keep, to store, and to transfer those variations or mutations 

 of a not properly adaptive sort which, though originating 

 by chance, happen to satisfy some needs of the organism. 



CRITICISM OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF STORING AND HANDING 

 DOWN CONTINGENT VARIATIONS 



Strange to say, this second hypothesis of dogmatic 

 Lamarckism, invented with the express purpose of defeating 

 Darwinism and taking the place of its fluctuating variability, 

 which was found not to do justice to the facts this second 

 hypothesis of dogmatic Lamarckism is liable to just the 

 same objections as dogmatic Darwinism itself. 



As it is important to understand well the real logical 

 nature of our objections to both of the great transformistic 



1 C. E. v. Baer clearly discriminated between the type, the degree of 

 organisation, and the histological structure. All these three topics indeed 

 have to be taken into account separately ; the third alone is of the adaptive 

 type. All of them may be independent of each other : the Amoeba may 

 be as adapted histologically as is a high vertebrate, but it is of much 

 lower type ; and in its own type it is of a lower degree of organisation than 

 Radiolaria are. 



