DARWIN'S PLACE IN FUTURE BIOLOGY 41 



tion-, but that seems to me utterly unimportant, compared to the question of 

 Creation or Modification. 4 



How vitally it concerns both justice to Darwin and sound views of 

 'life generally that technical biology and lay understanding alike should 

 face right in this matter ! 



But if natural selection is really unimportant as contrasted with 

 evolution, how has it come to occupy so large a part of the stage? 

 How is it that accredited expounders of evolution the world over have 

 insisted that natural selection is the only genuine brand of Darwinism, 

 and must be the corner-stone of Darwin's greatness ? 



The elements entering into the answer are manifold. Three have 

 been indicated already. These may be summarized thus : 



1. Undue weight has been attached to the fact that the idea of evolu- 

 tion did not originate with Darwin but is " old as thought itself." 

 Absence of adequate experiential evidence for the truth of this vague 

 idea until Darwin produced it, has not been given enough importance. 



2. With the passage of time and our familiarization with the idea of 

 evolution there has been a tendency to minimize the importance of the 

 grip in which miraculous creation held men's minds up to the Dar- 

 winian era. 



3. A wholly unwarranted importance has been attached to the part 

 played by the natural selection hypothesis in promoting belief in the 

 truth of evolution. Darwin became an evolutionist before he was a 

 natural selectionist, and there is good reason for supposing the rest of 

 us would have gone with him had he never thought of natural selection. 



Other elements in the answer to our query must now be taken up. 

 In the first place, Darwin himself placed a heavier burden of causal 

 efficiency on his hypothesis than it is able to bear. This he at length 

 acknowledged in his usual open, honest way. Perhaps his most positive 

 statement to this effect is in " The Descent of Man." 5 It has often 

 been quoted, though hardly enough heeded. He says : 



I now admit, after reading the essay by Niigeli on plants, and the remarks' 

 of various authors with respect to animals, more especially those recently made 

 by Professor Broca, that in the earlier editions of my " Origin of Species " I 

 probably attributed too much to the action of Natural Selection or the survival 

 of the fittest. I have altered the fifth edition of the Origin so as to confine 

 my remarks to adaptive changes in structure. I had not formerly sufficiently 

 considered the existence of many structures which appear to be, as far as we 

 can judge, neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the 

 greatest oversights as yet detected in my work. 



But the mischief had been done, and Darwin's inability to remedy 

 it troubled him not a little. 



Let us see if there is anything either in his argument itself, or in his 



1 " Letters," II., p. 163. 

 5 1., p. 146. 



