148 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



individual offspring are in adaptation to the new conditions 

 of life, "without the aid of Natural Selection," as Darwin 

 says. 



Thus Biichner writes : " There seems to be no fundamental 

 opposition between Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism, and one 

 may rather be considered as the complement of the other "^ 



Dr. Vernon, who accepts hereditary variations which have 

 arisen from direct action on the soma — i.e., the vegetative 

 system in plants and the bodies of animals, asks : " Are we to 

 agree with Henslow that the close adaptation of plants to their 

 environment is due entirely to the responsive power of proto- 

 plasm to the external environmental forces, and that it is 

 absolutely unnecessary to call in the aid of Natural Selection ? 

 By no means. Adaptive variation may be responsible for a 

 good deal of the adaptation observed in plants, and for a very 

 small part of that observed in animals, but probably [why?] 

 in each case by far the larger portion must be ascribed to the 

 ever-present and ever-acting agency of Natural Selection." - 



This author does not perceive that when a// the offspring 

 vary alike under the definite action of the environment there 

 are tto variations for Natural Selection to select from. Hence 

 Darwin says, " a new sub-variety will be formed zvithout the. aid 

 of Natural Selection ". That is, so far as a new variety is con- 

 cerned. Still, out of, say, 100 seedlings, though they all vary 

 alike, 95 may perish from various causes, but they have nothing 

 to do with the production of the variation. The mistake is due 

 to the fact that he does not distinguish between Natural Selec- 

 tion as supposed to weed out all the imaginary individuals less 

 fitted in strticiure {i.e., Darwi7iism), and Natural Selection as 

 being concerned with those individuals which are unable to 

 withstand the struggle from various reasons, but altogether irre- 

 spective of structure. 



Natural Selection is always present, wherever some die and 



' hast Words on Materialism, p. 194. 



* Variation in Animals and Plants (Int. Sci. Ser.), p 391. 



