TTvESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 51 



NEO-DARWINISM.-^ 



We will next briefly pass iu review the extraordinar}^ dis- 

 cussion which has followed chiefly from the publication of 

 Weismann's essays. As already remarked, they produced very 

 little influence upon the German mind, and most German in- 

 vestigators who noticed them at all, either saw little in them, 

 or else attacked them with greater or less violence. It is 

 almost exclusively in England that thej^ have found favor, and 

 here a veritable school of biologists has sprung into existence 

 prepared to defend even the most extreme of Weismann's 

 theories. It is due to the German investigator to say that, 

 with the exception of the slight tendency above pointed out to 

 dogmatize on the subject of the non-transmissibility of acquired 

 characters, his essays are dignified and courteous and often 

 evince an almost Darwinian modesty wdth regard to his own 

 theories. Far different was the case with most of his English 

 disciples. What he states as probable they assert as forever 

 settled, and his working hypotheses become for them the funda- 

 mental truths of science. His papers were translated and re- 

 viewed, usually in an aggressive manner before au}^ one had 

 ventured to criticise them. Being usually beyond the reach of 

 an}' but the embryological specialist all except ardent disciples 

 reserved their judgment and declined to enter the field. At 

 first there was an attempt to make it appear that Weismann's 

 views reflected only those of Darwin himself and that all out- 

 side of them consisted in deviations and wanderings from his 

 doctrines. It was sought to stamp them with the name of 



* The expression Neo-Darwinian was first used, so far as I am aware, 

 by Dr. G. J. Romanes in a letter to Nature for Aug. 30, 1888 (Vol. 

 XXVIII, p. 413), and occurs frequently iu subsequent discussions. The 

 substantive form Neo-Darwinism was a natural outgrowth from it. 



