ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



351 



Haeekel's work is, as he himself admits, highly con- 

 jectural, 1 it has done much to extend and popularise the 



whole domain of modern post- 

 Darwinian biology. The problem 

 is far from being solved, though it 

 is perhaps nearer a solution than 

 the question as to the cause of 

 gravitation. Thirdly, there is the 

 ambitious attempt to construct a 

 general philosophy of life by means 

 of the new principle, or some modi- 

 fication or amplification of it. After 

 Newton had discovered universal 

 gravitation, the attempt was made 

 by Boscovich and the French school 

 of mathematical physics to use the 

 idea of attraction at a distance as a 

 general physical theory. Of those 

 who, before or after Darwin, at- 

 tempted the more ambitious task, 

 we may take Herbert Spencer, Ernst 

 Haeckel, and Niigeli as three dis- 

 tinct representatives. They, how- 

 ever, agree in one point viz., in 

 considering natural selection to be 

 insufficient, and in admitting other 

 agencies, which are largely drawn 

 from the suggestive writings of 

 Lamarck. The section of these 

 philosophical writers who consider 

 Lamarck's principles to be more 

 fundamental than Darwin's, and 

 who are largely represented by 

 American naturalists (notably E. 

 D. Cope and A. Hyatt), are called 

 neo-Lamarckians. The best account 

 of their views will be found in the 

 last chapter of Professor Packard's 

 book, ' Lamarck, the Founder of 

 Evolution' (1901). The following 

 passage quoted there (p. 391) from 

 A much earlier memoir (1877) gives 

 A very clear account of the reason- 

 ing of this school : " Darwin's 

 phrase, ' natural selection,' or Her- 

 bert Spencer's term, 'survival of 

 the fittest," expresses simply the 

 final result, while the process of 

 the origination of the new forms 



which have survived, or been 

 selected by nature, is to be ex- 

 plained by the action of the physi- 

 cal environments of the animals, 

 coupled with inheritance - force. 

 The phrases quoted have been mis- 

 used to state the cause, when they 

 simply express the result of the 

 action of a chain of causes which 

 we may, with Herbert Spencer, 

 call the ' environment ' of the 

 organism undergoing modification : 

 and therefore a form of Lamarck- 

 ianism, greatly modified by recent 

 scientific discoveries, seems to meet 

 most of the difficulties which arise 

 in accounting for the origination of 

 species and higher groups of organ- 

 isms. " It is also well to note that 

 Mr Wallace, though not a Lamarck- 

 ian, considers the principle of nat- 

 ural selection insufficient especi- 

 ally to explain the higher develop- 

 ments of mental life. (See ' Dar- 

 winism,' p. 463, &c.) 



1 " It is evident that our ' phyl- 

 ogeny ' is and remains an edifice 

 of hypotheses in the same way as 

 her sister, historical geology. For 

 she tries to gain a connected view 

 of the course and causes of events 

 long past, the direct investigation 

 of which is impossible. Neither 

 observation nor experiment can 

 give us direct information regard- 

 ing the endless processes of change 

 through which the existing animal- 

 and plant -forms have emerged out 

 of lengthy ancestral stages. . . . 

 The empirical documents of our 

 history of descent will always 

 remain largely incomplete, however 

 much through continued discoveries 

 our region of knowledge of individ- 

 ual things may increase." (Haeckel, 

 ' Systematische Phylogenie,' 1 894, 

 vol. i. preface, p. vi.) 



