CHAPTER XVI 



NEO-D ARWINISM AND N E O - L A M A R C K I SM 



Decline of Darwinism 



TOWARDS THE CLOSE of the nineteenth century the influence of Darwin- 

 ism began noticeably to wane. The signs of this are many: partly 

 internal, in that the actual theory, as had so often happened before 

 and indeed always will happen with dominating views, becomes split up into 

 a number of mutually conflicting tendencies in different directions, and partly 

 external, in phenomena manifested in the general cultural situation. The op- 

 timistic belief in progress as a law governing nature and human life, which 

 prevailed in the middle of the century and formed the basis of the success 

 of Darwinism, had some decades after been essentially disturbed. The un- 

 limited progress that was to follow upon political and economic freedom 

 had proved to be somewhat relative; democracy, which had been introduced 

 in many countries, had led to disappointments, out of which much capital 

 had been made by its political opponents, while free competition had called 

 forth, not a friendly and stimulating rivalry with a universally acknowledged 

 precedence for the best, but an inimical and severe struggle between rival en- 

 terprises, social classes, and nations, wherein people sought rather to do one 

 another the greatest possible injury. It was quite natural that the confidence 

 in liberalism that had but recently been so strong should in such circum- 

 stances begin to waver; the belief that progress goes on by itself began to 

 be regarded as a matter of course; instead men of courage were required to 

 remove the increasing difficulties. So there arose a long line of opponents 

 to liberalism, from the strange romanticist Carlyle, with his demand for 

 hero-worship, to Nietzsche, with his paradoxical "superman" ideal; both 

 deserve mention as men who made violent attacks on Darwin and his theory. 

 Their successes in the sphere of literature may thus be registered as defeats 

 for Darwinism, and they were by no means the only ones of their kind; on 

 the contrary, there appeared in th nineties a literary tendency that was 

 wholly intended to be a contrast to the naturalistic literature of the pre- 

 ceding decade based on natural science. And while the popularity of Dar- 

 winism among the general public thus began to wane, its champions among 

 the scientists had to defend themselves against the obstacles that the re- 

 sults of fresh research placed in the way of the old theory. 



As we know, both Darwin and Haeckel had based their doctrines of 



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