DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 109 



able as the attempt to base the eternal truth of religion on what 

 may eventually prove to be a transient phase of scientific belief. 



With regard to evolution, however, we are dealing with what 

 may fairly claim to be an established doctrine. Certainly it is 

 not too much to say that in the scientific world it has won its 

 way to security, and has brought over to its side the vast ma- 

 jority of those who have a right to give an opinion on the scien- 

 tific question. In saying this, however, we do not mean that 

 evolution is stereotyped in the form in which Darwin gave it to 

 the world. No one would more indignantly resent such a possi- 

 bility than Darwin himself. And it is remarkable that the year 

 which told us the story of Darwin's work and life, found us face 

 to face with two attempts to carry out the doctrine of evolution 

 in different, and as it seems, mutually inconsistent lines. In the 

 July number of the " Journal of the Linnsean Society," 1886, Mr. 

 Romanes propounded a theory — perhaps we should more prop- 

 erly say suggested for consideration a theory — to which he gave 

 the name of physiological selection. Last year, thanks to two 

 excellent articles in " Nature," by Prof. Moseley, and a paper at 

 the British Association on " Polar Globules," we were introduced 

 to Prof. Weismann's " germ-plasma " doctrine. 



What is commonly known as Darwinism includes in it two 

 elements which are by no means necessarily connected — the one 

 the Lamarckian theory of descent, the other the more strictly 

 Darwinian theory of natural selection. We had got so accus- 

 tomed to being told that the experience of one generation became 

 the instinct of the next, and that the transmission of acquired 

 habits was one of the most important as well as the most obvious 

 factors in the variation in species, that it is somewhat startling 

 to be told now that there is no verified case of the transmission 

 of acquired characters, and that the Lamarckian doctrine of 

 descent was never essential to Darwinism, though it existed as 

 a survival in it. Yet this, in short, is Prof. Weismann's view, 

 and it was received with general favor at the Manchester meet- 

 ing of the British Association. It would seem to those who 

 speak without special knowledge that the two views advocated 

 respectively by Mr. Romanes and Prof. Weismann are mutu- 

 ally incompatible, and that the latter view if adopted would be 

 fatal to some of the most cherished theories of Herbert Spen- 

 cer. According to Mr. Romanes, " natural selection is not a the- 

 ory of the origin of species." * According to Prof. Weismann, 

 natural selection is the main cause of such variation. Mr. Ro- 

 manes talks of the " swamping effects of intercrossing," while 

 Prof. Weismann sees in every case of sexual reproduction a mul- 

 tiplication of the possibilities of adaptation to an unfavorable 



* " Journal," p. 398. 



