DARWINISM'S PRESENT STANDING. 375 



The selection theories do not satisfy present-day biolo- 

 gists 2 as efficient causal explanations of species-trans- 

 Natu-al formation. The fluctuating variations are not 



selection not a sufficient handles for natural selection; the 

 nation^oTspSes- hosts of trivial, indifferent species differences 

 forming. are nO |- the result of an adaptively selecting 



agent. On the other hand the declarations of Korschinsky, 

 Wolff, Driesch, and others that natural selection is non- 

 existent, is a vagary, a form of speech, or a negligible influ- 

 ence in descent, are unconvincing; they are unproved. 



And these bitter antagonists of selection are especially un- 

 convincing when they come to offer a replacing theory, an 

 alternative explanation of transformation and 



The weakness 



of the replacing descent. To my mind every theory of hetero- 

 genesis, of orthogenesis, or of modification by 

 the transmission of acquired characters, confesses itself ulti- 

 mately subordinate to the natural selection theory. How- 

 ever independent of selection and Darwinism may be the 

 beginnings of modification, the incipiency of new species 

 and of new lines of descent ; even, indeed, however neces- 

 sary to natural selection some auxiliary or supporting 

 theory to account for the beginnings of change confessedly 

 is, the working factor or influence postulated by any such 

 auxiliary theory soon finds its independence lost, its influ- 

 ence in evolution dominated and controlled by natural selec- 

 tion. As soon as the new modifications, the new species 

 characters, the new lines of descent, if they may come so 

 far, attain that degree of development where they have to 

 submit to the test of utility, of fitness, just there they are 

 practically delivered over to the tender mercies of selection. 

 No orthogenetic line of descent can persist in a direction 

 not adaptive, that is, not fit, and certainly no present-day 

 biologist is ready to fall back on the long deserted stand- 

 point of teleology and ascribe to heterogenesis or ortho- 

 genesis an auto-determination toward adaptiveness and 



