136 THE PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION 



Nothing in this field could be more strained than 

 the attempts of some Darwinian evolutionists to 

 find usefulness in characters whose indifference is 

 almost axiomatic. But the subject is a difficult 

 one; Guyer's expressed attitude commends itself 

 to all evolutionists: ''Distrust of the earlier naive 

 belief in the wholesale inheritance of any or all 

 modifications which might be acquired by the body 

 was the necessary prelude to the later doctrine of 

 germinal continuity which has proved to be such 

 a remarkable incitant to research in the fields of 

 embryology, cytology, and genetics. As an outcome 

 of this research one important discovery has fol- 

 lowed another until today we have before us in 

 these several realms an imposing body of inter- 

 related facts. But in our effort to root out the 

 cruder Lamarckian heresies, is it not possible that 

 we have been more zealous than our actual knowl- 

 edge warrants.^" ^^ It is this very attitude of in- 

 telligent appreciation of difficulties and possibilities 

 which is so greatly needed. 



Certainly the original ideas of Lamarck were in 

 part naive, and just as certainly some of them are 

 still without any evident basis in fact, but he 

 worked half of a century before Darwin and was 

 a pioneer in biological science, so we can hardly 

 expect in his results the accuracy which we seek 

 in modern biology. His idea of the inheritance of 



i« Proc. Am. Philos. Soc, Vol. LXII, p. 274, 1923. 



