ii8 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



independent science, distinct from the physics and chemistry of the 

 Hving body. It is in this that we find the great excellence of Darwin's 

 explanation of the origin of species by the extermination of the 

 unfit and the survival of the relatively fit ; for he shows that the 

 fitness is determined by the external world and not by any inherent 

 property of fitness, or of unfitness, in those which are preserved, or 

 weeded out, since a difference in the external world might have 

 reversed the result. 



The motive of my own letter on " Lamarck and Lyell," which 

 has called forth this " Reply," was not love of controversy, but a 

 natural desire to protest against the statement, which has ap- 

 peared in a book, that I am one of the prominent advocates of 

 Lamarckism. 



Since I " have quite failed to understand the Lamarckian view," 

 the author of the "Reply" suspects strongly that I have not tried, 

 though I hope he will credit my assertion that my failure is not due 

 to lack of effort, but to the incompetency of this effort to bring about 

 the desired result. 



My studies seem to show that Lamarckians believe (i) that effort, 

 use and disuse, and the direct action of the conditions of life, are 

 adequate to explain all the phenomena of fitness, and that natural 

 selection is superfluous ; (2) that natural selection is useful as a 

 means for preserving what the Lamarckian "factors" supply, but 

 that it originates nothing; (3) that these "factors" account for the 

 "incipient stages" which are seized upon and culminated by natural 

 selection — that they press the button, as it were, leaving natural 

 selection to do the rest ; and (4) that species are exactly like inorganic 

 types, and that the opinion that they are distinguished by fitness is 

 erroneous. 



If failure to discover which of these is the " Lamarckian view " 

 is failure to understand this view, I frankly admit that I have " quite 

 failed," although I regret this the less since all these hypotheses seem 

 to me equally unsatisfactory. I do not know how many hold the 

 opinion that the conception of fitness, as distinctive of species, is 

 erroneous, but as I hope the common sense of most will ultimately 

 hold a fretful few in awe, I shall not dwell upon this point of view at 

 present, except to call attention to the familiar fact that the 

 phenomena of geographical distribution are inexplicable unless 

 species are more or less fitted for that state of life to which they are 

 born. 



As regards the hypotheses which I have numbered i, 2, and 3, it 

 is clear that unless the " Lamarckian factors" can be proved com- 

 petent to explain the incipient stages of useful structures, they cannot 

 be competent to do what i and 2 attribute to them. I therefore ask, 

 in my letter on Lamarck and Lyell, for evidence that the influence of 

 the so-called Lamarckian factors is beneficial, and I asserted that I 

 learned, from the study of Lyell's " Principles of Geology," to ask for 



