CHAPTER III 



FAILURE OF THE CLASSICAL FACTORS TO EXPLAIN ABRUPT 

 TRANSFORMATIONS, CREATIVE OF NEW SPECIES. 



LAMARCKISM, like Darwinism, lays down the thesis of 

 very small, slow, and innumerable modifications as 

 necessary to the progressive genesis of species. 



This concept, which has been accepted as a dogma, 

 would seem above controversy. When, recently, De 

 Vries made known his observations on what he called 

 * mutations,' i.e. the abrupt appearance of new vegetable 

 species from the ancestral species, without any inter- 

 mediate transitional forms, he threw all those interested 

 in philosophical naturalism into confusion and disorder. 



For several years a curious spectacle was presented. 



The fact of mutation supplied the doctrine of 

 transformability with the only proof that was lacking 

 experimental verification. Nevertheless it was seen, 

 on the one hand, that transformists endeavoured to 

 minimise the importance of the new facts and the scope 

 of the new theory; and on the other, na'ive adversaries 

 adopted it with enthusiasm, both imagining that the 

 ruin of the classical teaching would involve the ruin of 

 the evolutionary idea also! 



Le Dantec, in his book, La Crise du Transformismef- 

 thus expresses himself. 



' A new theory based on verified experiments has 

 seen the light a few years since, and has made 

 numerous converts in the domain of the natural 

 sciences. But this theory of mutations or abrupt 

 variations is the negation of Lamarckism; I might 



1 Published by F61ix Alcan (Paris). 

 23 



