PRESENT STATUS OF THE QUESTION 5 



report anything but the personal conception of in- 

 dividual investigators, if he were asked for infor- 

 mation regarding the hereditary transmission of 

 acquired characters, the significance of natural selec- 

 tion, or many other details of the theory of evolution? 

 For what to one is the corner stone of the theory is 

 to another a factor of quite subordinate importance, 

 while a third regards it as the greatest aberration 

 of the past century." l Lastly, may be cited Mr. 

 Bateson, one of the foremost exponents of Mendelism, 

 who rejects Darwinism, one might say, with con- 

 tumely. " The many converging lines of evidence point 

 so clearly to the central fact of the origin of the forms 

 of life by an evolutionary process that we are compelled 

 to accept this deduction, but as to almost all the essential 

 features, whether of cause or of mode, by which specific 

 diversity has become what we perceive it to be, we have 

 to confess an ignorance nearly total. [Italics mine.] 

 The transformation of masses of population by im- 

 perceptible steps guided by selection, is, as most of 

 us now see, so inapplicable to the facts, whether of 

 variation or specificity, that we can only marvel both 

 at the want of penetration displayed by the advocates 

 of such a proposition, and at the forensic skill by 

 which it was made to appear acceptable even for 

 a time." 2 



These quotations might be much extended and 

 diversified, but they cover the principal categories 



1 Gustav Steinmann: Die Abstammungslehre, Leipzig, 1908, pp. 1, 2. 

 8 William Bateson: Problems of Genetics, New Haven, 1913, p. 248. 



