INTRODUCTORY: "DEATH-BED OF DARWINISM." 5 



distinct concessions to the beleaguering party. The fair 

 truth is that the Darwinian selection theories, considered 

 with regard to their claimed capacity to be an independently 

 sufficient mechanical explanation of descent, stand to-day 

 seriously discredited in the biological world. On the other 

 hand, it is also fair truth to say that no replacing hypothesis 

 or theory of species-forming has been offered by the oppo- 

 nents of selection which has met with any general or even 

 considerable acceptance by naturalists. Mutations seem to 

 be too few and far between ; for orthogenesis we can dis- 

 cover no satisfactory mechanism ; and the same is true for 

 the Lamarckian theories of modification by the cumulation, 

 through inheritance, of acquired or ontogenic characters. 

 Kurz und gut, we are immensely unsettled. 



Now but little of this philosophic turmoil and wordy 

 strife has found its way as yet into current American litera- 

 ture. Our bookshop windows offer no display, as in Ger- 

 many, of volumes and pamphlets on the newer evolutionary 

 study ; our serious-minded quarterlies, if we have any, and 

 our critical monthlies and weeklies contain no debates or 

 discussions over "das Stcrbclagcr des Darwinismus" Our 

 popular magazines keep to the safe and pleasant task of 

 telling sweetly of the joys of making Nature's acquaintance' 

 through field-glasses and the attuned ear. But just as cer- 

 tainly as the many material things ''made in Germany" have 

 found their way to us so will come soon the echoes and 

 phrases of the present intellectual activity in evolutionary 

 affairs, an activity bound to continue as long as the new 

 lines of biological investigation continue their amazing out- 

 put of new facts to serve as the bases for new critical attacks 

 on the old notions and for the upbuilding of new hypotheses. 

 If now the first of these echoes to come across the water 

 to us prove to be, as wholly likely, those from the more vio- 

 lent and louder debaters, they may lead to an undue dismay 

 and panic on our part. Things are really in no such desper- 



