222 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



sympathy with Lotsy, believes that new forms may arise by 

 the releasing of characters hitherto suppressed, as will be referred 

 to presently, but he will not admit the possibility of any 

 gradual modification of a species by the response of the organism 

 to external agencies. 



Darwin he dismisses in a few words. " We go to Darwin 

 for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain 

 emulate his scholarship, his width and power of exposition, 

 but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We 

 read his scheme of evolution as we would that of Lucretius or 

 of Lamarck, delighting in their simplicity and their courage." 

 Bateson admits, as every one must, that natural selection has 

 played a certain part in evolution, but he is very doubtful 

 about its being more than a secondary factor. He is " even 

 more sceptical as to the validity of that appeal to changes in 

 the condition of life as direct causes of modification, upon 

 which latterly at all events Darwin laid much emphasis." A 

 belief held by Darwin and Huxley, and strenuously maintained 

 by Herbert Spencer and Cope, and which no one has ever 

 disproved, may of course be erroneous, but can hardly be 

 dismissed thus lightly on the strength of experiments which 

 have little or no direct bearing on the question. 



Other views very generally held he brushes aside with 

 equal confidence. " We have done," he says, " with the notion 

 that Darwin came latterly to favour, that large differences 

 can arise by accumulation of small differences. Such small 

 differences are often mere ephemeral effects of conditions of 

 life, and as such are not transmissible." I do not know for 

 whom Prof. Bateson speaks, but there are certainly still many 

 who hold that modern research has abundantly proved the 

 truth of Darwin's view that evolution has unquestionably been 

 the result of the accumulation of small differences. 



But let us look a little further at the suggestions Prof. 

 Bateson has to offer us in exchange for the old-fashioned views 

 of Lamarck and Darwin. " This is no time for devising theories 

 of evolution, and I propound none. But we have got to 

 recognise that there has been an evolution, and that somehow 

 or other the forms of life have arisen from fewer forms ; we 

 may as well see whether we are limited to the old view that 

 evolutionary progress is from the simple to the complex, and 

 whether after all it is conceivable that the progress was the 



