DARWIN 



trained thinker." Professor Bateson carefully knocks 

 down every prop to natural selection, to the inheri- 

 tance of acquired traits, and to evolution in general ; 

 then he concludes by asking us to apply the doctrine 

 of evolution to the thoughts and actions of men be- 

 cause he still has faith in evolution, and some day 

 biologists may find its solution. Delage, who offers 

 enough objections to evolution by natural selection 

 to kill even the most desirable theory, yet concludes 

 with the following extraordinary statement which, 

 taken by itself, would make one believe that he had 

 been unable to find a single valid objection to it: 

 "Darwin's everlasting title to glory will be that he 

 explained the seemingly marvellous adaptation of 

 living things by the mere action of natural factors, 

 without looking for a divine intervention, without 

 resorting to any finalist or metaphysical hypothe- 

 sis.""^ If it is degrading to man to depend ultimately 

 on divine intervention when no other explanation is 

 attainable, Darwin probably has the glory of avoid- 

 ing it, but for the rest Delage is writing nonsense. 



It is a pleasure to turn to a biologist who is really 

 trying to apply the laws of mechanics to those func- 



27 This conviction that biologists are still groping for a scientific 

 method, accuracy of thought, and intelligible expression is shared 

 in by, at least, some of their own number. W. E. Ritter, Director of 

 the Biological Research Laboratory of the University of Califor- 

 nia, writes that: "Biology at present needs few things more sorely 

 than a system of reasoning which shall not beget in students the 

 mental habit of allowing recondite concepts and postulates and 

 strange words to cast every-day, familiar facts into outer darkness." 

 And Professor D'Arcy Thompson is very outspoken in his criticism 

 of present biological theories and laxity of thinking. 



28 Delage and Goldsmith, op. cit., p. 45. .^^iC\ hT 



C 237 n 



5^ 



