Growing Opposition to Darwinism 



majority of biologists that they see everything 

 through Darwinian spectacles. The wish has 

 been in many cases the father to the observation. 

 Zoologists are ever on the lookout for the action 

 of natural selection, and in consequence frequently 

 imagine they see it where it does not exist. 

 Many naturalists, consciously or unconsciously, 

 stretch facts to make them fit the Darwinian theory. 

 Those facts which refuse to be so distorted are, if 

 not actively ignored or suppressed, overlooked as 

 throwing no light upon the doctrine. This is no 

 exaggeration. A perusal of almost any popular 

 book dealing with zoological theory leaves the 

 impression that there is nothing left to be ex- 

 plained in the living world, that there is no door 

 leading to the secret chambers of nature to which 

 natural selection is not an " open sesame." 



But the triumph of natural selection has not 

 been so complete as its more enthusiastic sup- 

 porters would have us believe. Some there are 

 who have never admitted the all-sufficiency of 

 natural selection. In the British Isles these have 

 never been numerous. In the United States of 

 America and on the Continent they are more 

 abundant. The tendency seems to be for them 

 to increase in numbers. Hence the recent 

 lamentations of Dr Wallace and Sir E. Ray 

 Lankester. Modern biologists are commonly 

 supposed to fall into two schools of thought 

 the Neo- Darwinian and the Neo-Lamarckian. 



