460 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1892. 



them not to so cooperate, since life is characterized by a continuous 

 display of energy. Life is continuous in the material succession 

 and derivation of its individuals, and thus also continuous as to its 

 dynamical or metabolic processes, or the display of its energies. It 

 is safe to say that the continuity of vital energy or the energy of 

 life, is a far more potent agency in the evolution of organic forms, 

 than the continuity and variability of germ plasm, assumed by 

 Weismann. Vital energy and cosmical energy are coexistent and 

 continuously cooperative. Weismann at last apprehends this. 



Therefore, whenever a Weismannian speaks of variations, how- 

 ever he may assume that they are caused, he is forced to tacitly 

 imply that energy is consumed or dissipated in their production, 

 and he is therefore also compelled to tacitly admit the validity of 

 thd Lamarckian method of reasoning. 



If he tries to escape the snare which has been set for him, as 

 above, he is placed in a still worse and even more compromising 

 position, viz. : the denial of the validity of the universal principle of 

 the conservation of energy. 



No character whatever, of any living thing, however trivial, 

 can be acquired without the expenditure of energy and the develop- 

 ment of motion in some form ; therefore, all characters are so 

 acquired. Consequently, natural selection can choose only from 

 amongst characters such as have been thus dynamically produced, 

 according to Lamarck's original thesis, modified so as to bring it 

 into harmony with the requirements of modern science, or the doc- 

 trine of the conservation of energy. 



The only way in which a Weismannian, or Neo-Darwinian 

 can now evade the rigorous fatality of the preceding reasoning, is to 

 declare that natural selection includes in the scope of its operations 

 the production of variations. But he is forbidden, and for sound 

 reasons, to do this by the express denial of any such implication or 

 application of natural selection, by the great expounder of that 

 principle, Darwin himself. 



Disingenuousness and subterfuge on the part of Weismannians, 

 have hitherto helped to keep the foregoing disagreeable statement of 

 the facts in the background, but the primary fallacy of the Weis- 

 mannians, or Neo-Darwinians, has now been exposed, and shown to 

 be a sort of biological scare-crow that we may confidently leave to 

 wind, weather and neglect. The mischief that Weismann has done 

 in leading gullible people astray, by most ingeniously throwing 



