Evolution of Evolution-Theory. 227 



perhaps a recognition of this weakness that led Darwin 

 to leave Lamarckism more and more out of account as 

 he grew older, and it is a recognition of this weakness 

 that has led Prof. Ray Lankester to say that perhaps 

 the greatest step of progress in modern aetiology will be 

 the complete removal of all taint of Lamarckism. 



As we shall see later on, a recent suggestion has 

 made it possible to retain an evolutionary, as opposed 

 to a merely physiological interest in modifications, even 

 although their transmission is denied. 



In 1866, when Haeckel's Generelle Morphologic was 

 published, Cope and Hyatt independently stated certain 

 evolutionary ideas which were afterwards developed 

 into what is often called Neo-Lamarckism. The former 

 based his conclusions primarily on a study of Amphibia, 

 the latter on a study of extinct Cephalopods, and they 

 agreed that the variations which result in evolution "are 

 not multifarious or promiscuous, but definite and direct". 



The Neo-Lamarckian school, which might perhaps be 

 called Nagelian, includes those to whom the evolution 

 of organisms is pre-eminently a story of growth, of pro- 

 gressive variation in definite directions. Their conten- 

 tion, phrased in many different forms, seems to amount 

 to this : that the nature of the organism is self-differen- 

 tiating and self-integrating, that its very nature implies 

 self-adaptation and a potentiality of progress, that its 

 racial growth tends to be cumulative, selective, deter- 

 minate, and harmonious like crystallization. This school 

 has never commanded attention as the Darwinians and 

 the Lamarckians have done, partly, perhaps, because its 

 members have so often lost themselves in what seems to 

 outsiders mere meaningless babbling, not unnatural, 

 perhaps, since our knowledge of the nature and condi- 

 tions of growth is so infantile. But while it is easy to 

 scoff at the verbalism of this school, and to nickname 

 them " Topsians " for the naivete" of their discovery that 

 the cosmos grows, there was behind their verbalism and 

 naivete*, as Nageli's work well shows, a firm grip of the 

 idea perhaps Utopian that a complete aetiology must 

 carry on the laws and lessons of the inorganic to a solu- 

 tion of the problem of organic evolution. 



