292 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



Nageli, Kolliker, Wigand, Eimer, and many others. But a 

 full discussion of all these " laws " would hardly help us 

 much in our theoretical endeavour, as all of them, it must be 

 confessed, do little more than state the mere fact that some 

 unknown principle of organisation must have been at work 

 in phylogeny, if we are to accept the theory of descent 

 at all. 



It is important to notice that even such a convinced 

 Darwinian as Wallace, who is well known to have been an 

 independent discoverer of the elimination principle, admitted 

 an exception to this principle in at least one case with 

 regard to the origin of man. But one exception of course 

 destroys the generality of a principle. 



As we ourselves feel absolutely incapable of adding 

 anything specific to the general statement that there must 

 be an unknown principle of transformism, if the hypothesis 

 of descent is justified at all, we may here close our discussion 

 of the subject. 



