32 GERMINAL SELECTION. 



On this last point, now, I believe, they are mistaken, 

 be they ever so strongly convinced of the correctness 

 of their view and ever so aggressive and embittered in 

 their defence of it. 



Recently, an inquirer of great caution and calmness 

 of judgment, Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan, has expressed 

 the opinion that the Lamarckian principle must at 

 least be admitted as a working hypothesis. But with 

 this I cannot agree, at least as things stand at present. 

 A working hypothesis may be false, and yet lead to 

 further progress ; that is, it may constitute an advance 

 to the extent of being useful in formulating the prob- 

 lem and in illuminating paths that are likely to lead 

 to results. But it seems to me that a hypothesis of this 

 kind has performed its services and must be discarded 

 the moment it is found to be at hopeless variance with 

 the facts. If it can be proved that precisely the same 

 degenerative processes also take place in such super- 

 fluous parts as have only passive and not active func- 

 tions, as is the case with the chitinous parts of the 

 skeleton of Arthropoda, then it is a demonstrated fact, 

 that the cessation of functional action is not the ef- 

 ficient cause of the process of degeneration. At once 

 your legitimate working hypothesis is transformed 

 into an illegitimate dogma illegitimate because it no 

 longer serves as a guide on the path to knowledge but 



the guidance of germinal selection mark out the way of 

 further development ; and hence it would be quite possible 

 in this sense to distinguish continuous, definitely directed 

 individual variations from such as fluctuate hither and thither 

 with no uniformity in the course of generations. The root 

 of the two is of course the same, and they admit of being 

 distinguished from each other only by their success, phyletic 

 modification, or by their failure. 



