DARWINISM ATTACKED. 91 



primary determination of lines of descent. But to these 

 supporting and concessionary theories we shall come in 

 a later chapter. 



To show how definitive and positive an anti-Darwinian 

 position is taken by some biologists I shall quote some para- 

 K , . , , graphs from an interesting short paper by Kor- 

 tadical anti-se- schinsky, 26 a Russian botanist whose formula- 

 tion of the theory of species-forming by hetero- 

 genesis preceded that of de Vries by two years. In this 

 paper (which is a vorlauUge Mitteilung published in Ger- 

 man preliminary to the issuance, in the publications of the 

 Royal Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, of a larger, 

 more detailed paper) Korschinsky arranges in parallel 

 columns the various corresponding or contrasting items of 

 the selection theory compared with the heterogenesis theory 

 of the author himself (for this full table see chapter xi). 

 From this table I quote only the following statements to 

 show how differently from the Darwinian view the probable 

 effects of the struggle for existence may appear to another 

 naturalist and to what radically anti-Darwinian conclusions 

 a man may come who interprets the effects of selection in 

 this way : 



"The origin of new forms can only occur under condi- 

 tions favourable for them, and the more favourable such 

 conditions are, that is, the less severe the struggle for ex- 

 istence is, the more energetic is their development. Under 

 severe external conditions new forms do not arise, or if they 

 appear they are extinguished. 



"The struggle for existence, and the selection which goes 

 hand in hand with it, compose a factor which restricts new- 

 appearing forms and restrains wider variations, and which is 

 in no way favourable to the production of new forms. It 

 is indeed an inimical factor in evolution. 



'Were there no struggle for existence, then there would 

 be no extinguishing of arising or already arisen forms. The 



