A. R. WALLACE AND LAMARCK 393 



It is of the greatest interest to recognize the fact that Darwin 

 himself saw nothing incompatible between the so-called 

 Lamarckian factors of use and disuse and the direct action of 

 the environment, and the principle of natural selection, but, on 

 the other hand, that the one set of factors might supplement the 

 other. 



On the occasion of the unveiling of the statue of Charles 

 Darwin in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, 

 Professor Huxley found occasion to observe that "science 

 commits suicide when it adopts a creed." 1 This warning, it is 

 to be feared, has not been heeded by all of Darwin's followers. 

 Many of these have departed very far from the moderate and 

 rational position of their leader and, while attributing to natural 

 selection almost every advance which has been made in the 

 evolution of the organic world, are, as we have already seen, 

 obliged to justify their neglect of the " Lamarckian " factors by 

 denying altogether the possibility of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, which Darwin, of course, freely admitted. Natural 

 selection, in the hands of these enthusiasts, and in spite of 

 Charles Darwin's efforts to maintain a just balance between this 

 and other factors, has indeed become a creed. 



Dr. Wallace from the first adopted an uncompromising 

 attitude towards the opinions of Lamarck. In the Linnean 

 Society paper from which we have already quoted he says : 



" The hypothesis of Lamarck that progressive changes in 

 species have been produced by the attempts of animals to increase 

 the development of their own organs, and thus modify their 

 structure and habits has been repeatedly and easily refuted by all 

 writers on the subject of varieties and species, and it seems to have 

 been considered that when this was done the whole question has 

 been finally settled ; but the view here developed renders such 

 an hypothesis quite unnecessary, by shewing that similar results 

 must be produced by the action of principles constantly at work 

 in nature. The powerful retractile talons of the falcon- and the 

 cat-tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition 

 of those animals ; 2 but among the different varieties which 

 occurred in the earlier and less highly organized forms of these 

 groups, those always survived longest ichich had the greatest facilities 

 for seizing their prey '." 



1 Vide Herbert Spencer's " Factors of Organic Evolution," p. 75. 



2 Who ever said they had, except in the sense that an animal voluntarily uses its 

 claws on appropriate occasions and that constantly repeated use causes them to 



