CHAPTER XII. 

 DARWINISM'S PRESENT STANDING. 



A RIVER rises from a perennial spring on the mountain side ; 



gravitation compels the water to keep moving, and rock 



Natural selec- walls, intervening hills, and soft loam banks 



tion the final determine the course of the stream. The living 



arbiter in 



descent. stream of descent finds its never-failing primal 



source in ever-appearing variations.; the eternal flux of 

 Nature, coupled with this inevitable primal variation, com- 

 pels the stream to keep always in motion, and selection 

 guides it along the ways of least resistance. Although there 

 can be no modification, no evolution, without variation, yet 

 neither can this variation, whatever its character and extent, 

 whether slight and fluctuating, large and mutational, de- 

 terminate or fortuitous, long compel descent to go contrary 

 to adaptation. And the guardian of the course is natural 

 selection. Selection will inexorably bar the forward move- 

 ment, will certainly extinguish the direction of any ortho- 

 genetic process, Nagelian, Eimerian, or de Vriesian, which is 

 not fit, that is, not adaptive. Darwinism, then, as the natural 

 selection of the fit, the final arbiter in descent control, 

 stands unscathed, clear and high above the obscuring cloud 

 of battle. At least, so it seems to me. But Darwinism, as 

 the all-sufficient or even most important causo-mechanical 

 factor in species-forming and hence as the sufficient ex- 

 planation of descent, is discredited and cast down. 1 At 

 least, again, so it seems to me. But Darwin himself claimed 

 no Allmacht for selection. Darwin may well cry to be saved 

 from his friends ! 



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