358 THE STUDY OF EVOLUTION 



• 

 between the organism and its environment." Sir Ray, it will be 



observed, passes this over in complete silence, and makes no refer- 

 ence to my further demonstration of direct adaptation in the matter 

 of acquirement of pathogenic powers. But by a casuistic mingling 

 of Spencer's statements and his own opinion he implies that I confuse 

 direct and indirect equilibration, and states that I hold the view 

 that mere modification of an organism in response to change of 

 environment is in every case " direct adaptation." This is the 

 method of the academic biologist, not of the seeker after scientific 

 truth. 



I freely admit that Sir Ray registers two definite hits. First 

 as to the confusion between "variation" and "variability." The 

 two are distinct, and the use of the latter in the circumstances was 

 inaccurate. It will be observed that the section is headed " The 

 Nature of Variation." I have before now employed the simile that 

 explosiveness, or explosibility, is one of the properties of nitro- 

 glycerine, but that it requires a force from without to produce an 

 explosion of this body. It would have been more accurate had I 

 written, " whether we deal with an inherent tendency to vary, or a 

 capacity on the part of living matter to he varied." But every fair- 

 minded reader will realize that this was the drift of my argument, 

 and will see that the misuse of the word variability weakened instead 

 of strengthening it. So, also, to those of us who have met Weismann 

 I confess that " vigorously " rather than " violently " would have 

 been the more appropriate adverb. But this again has no bearing 

 on the main argument. His hits are " outers." 



As to the other more personal matters in Sir Ray Lankester's 

 letter, these again are all evasions of the main issue, such as a contro- 

 versialist employs to darken counsel. They turn upon a triangular 

 correspondence between X (an old friend of Sir Ray's), Sir Ray, and 

 myself, in which, at the request of X, I wrote my views upon adapta- 

 tion to him ; X showed my letter to Sir Ray ; and Sir Ray's reply, 

 while addressed to me, was forwarded to X to read and send on to 

 me. To quote loyally the sense of a statement is not to " garble " 

 that statement, with what that implies, and I challenge Sir Ray to 

 publish the correspondence in full elsewhere, to show that my refer- 

 ence was not substantially correct, and that I was not justified in 

 my action. My two letters are, and have always been, at his dis- 

 posal for this purpose. 



For myself I desire no German naval victory in which, before the 

 action is fully developed, the fleet returns in triumph to its home 

 port sheltered by a cloud of inky smoke. Nor do hard hits irritate 

 me so long as they are clean. But I do feel most strongly that this 

 matter of adaptation and its mechanism is a matter that is not the 

 possession of zoologists and biologists alone, for them to dream 

 dreams about and hold unseemly parochial wrangles over at meetings 



