12 GERMINAL SELECTION. 



as to what particular variational track shall be trav- 

 elled. The cogency, the irresistible cogency, as I take 

 it, of the principle of selection is precisely its capacity 

 of explaining why fit structures always arise, and 

 that certainly is the great problem of life. Not the 

 fact of change, but the manner of the change, whereby 

 all things are maintained capable of life and existence, 

 is the pressing question. 



It is, therefore, a very remarkable fact, and one de- 

 serving of consideration, that to-day (1895), after 

 science has been in possession of this principle for 

 something over thirty years and during this time has 

 steadily and zealously busied itself with its critical 

 elaboration and with the exact determination of its 

 scope, that now the estimation in which it is held 

 should apparently be on the decrease. It would be 

 easy to enumerate a long list of living writers who 

 assign to it a subordinate part only in evolution, or 

 none at all. One of our youngest biologists speaks 

 without ado of the "pretensions of the refuted Dar- 

 winian theory, so called," 1 and one of the oldest and 

 most talented inquirers of our time, a pioneer in the 

 theory of evolution, who, unfortunately, is now gone 

 to his rest, Thomas Huxley, implicitly yet distinctly 

 intimated a doubt regarding the principle of selection 

 when he said: "Even if the Darwinian hypothesis 

 were swept away, evolution would still stand where 

 it is." Therefore, he, too, regarded it as not impossible 

 that this hypothesis should disappear from among 



1 Hans Driesch, Die Biologic ah sclbststandige Grund- 

 wissenschaft, Leipsic, 1893, p. 31, footnote. The sentence 

 reads: "An examination of the pretensions of the refuted 

 Darwinian theory, so called, would be an affront to our 

 readers." 



