NEOLAMARCKISM 399 
main simply corresponds to artificial selection; in 
the latter case, man selects forms already produced 
by domestication, the latter affording sports and 
varieties due to change in the surroundings, that is, 
soil, climate, food, and other physical features, as 
well as education. 
““In the case also of heredity, which began to 
operate as soon as the earliest life forms appeared, 
we have at the outset to invoke the principle of the 
heredity of characters acquired during the lifetime 
of lowest organisms. 
“* Finally, it is noticeable that when one is over- 
mastered by the dogma of natural selection he is 
apt, perhaps unconsciously, to give up all effort to 
work out the factors of evolution, or to seek to work 
out this or that cause of variation. Trusting too 
implicitly to the supposed vera causa, one may close 
his eyes to the effects of change of environment or 
to the necessity of constant attempts to discover the 
real cause of this or that variation, the reduction or 
increase in size of this or that organ; or become 
insensible to the value of experiments. Were the 
dogma of natural selection to become universally 
accepted, further progress would cease, and biology 
would tend to relapse into a stage of atrophy and 
degeneration. On the other hand, a revival of 
Lamarckism in its modern form, and a critical and 
doubting attitude towards natural selection as an 
efficient cause, will keep alive discussion and investi- 
gation, and especially, if resort be had to experi- 
mentation, will carry up to a higher plane the status 
of philosophical biology.”’ 
Although now the leader of the Neodarwinians, 
and fully assured of the “‘ all-sufficiency ’’ of natural 
selection, the veteran biologist Weismann, whose 
earlier works were such epoch-making contributions 
to insect embryology, was, when active as an in- 
