42 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



expressed very unfavourable opinions regarding 

 it. Driesch, for instance, says that Darwinism was 

 one of the great delusions of the nineteenth century, 

 which was completely taken in by it, and that 

 Plate s eulogy of Darwinism sounded to him like a 

 funeral oration. This unfavourable view concerns, 

 however, only the extreme form of Darwinism, 

 which seeks to explain everything exclusively by 

 selection. My own experience, gained in the 

 course of research work in my special department, 

 shows natural selection to be indispensable as a 

 subsidiary factor, but only a factor the interior 

 causes of evolution remain always the chief point to 

 consider, for they produce the beneficial modifica 

 tions, and so are of greater importance than 

 external circumstances, for these only eliminate 

 the modifications which are not beneficial in the 

 struggle for existence. 



We ought, moreover, always to consider the various 

 principles of evolution collectively, ajid selection is 

 only one of them, and, moreover, a subordinate 

 one, which in its very nature bears a negative char 

 acter for it only weeds out. It is, of course, 

 possible, as Professor Plate rightly pointed out in 

 an excellent dissertation on Darwin s principle of 

 selection (2nd ed. p. 187), that the result of this 

 negative selection may in many cases be positive, for 

 by means of it definite tendencies to evolution may 

 be logically furthered (Orthoselection), and so some 

 thing positive is produced. The action of natural 



