, RESULT OF THE DISCUSSION 89 



missibility of acquired characters, and assume that the 

 ostensible acquired character is not, in most cases, the 

 more or less tardy development of an innate character, 

 facts show us that hereditary transmission is the excep 

 tion and not the rule. How, then, shall we expect 

 it to develop an organ such as the eye ? When we 

 think of the enormous number of variations, all in 

 the same direction, that we must suppose to be 

 accumulated before the passage from the pigment- 

 spot of the Infusorian to the eye of the mollusc and of 

 the vertebrate is possible, we do not see how heredity, 

 as we observe it, could ever have determined this 

 piling-up of differences, even supposing that individual 

 efforts could have produced each of them singly. 

 That is to say that neo-Lamarckism is no more able 

 than any other form of evolutionism to solve the 

 problem. 



In thus submitting the various present forms of 

 evolutionism to a common test, in showing that they 

 all strike against the same insurmountable difficulty, 

 we have in no wise the intention of rejecting them 

 altogether. On the contrary, each of them, being 

 supported by a considerable number of facts, must be 

 true in its way. Each of them must correspond to 

 a certain aspect of the process of evolution. Perhaps 

 even it is necessary that a theory should restrict it 

 self exclusively to a particular point of view, in order 

 to remain scientific, i.e. to give a precise direction 

 to researches into detail. But the reality of which 

 each of these theories takes a partial view must trans 

 cend them all. And this reality is the special object 

 of philosophy, which is not constrained to scientific pre 

 cision because it contemplates no practical application. 



