io8o LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



Sexual Selection too) ; and his civilisation is thus largely both the 

 process and the resultant of his manifold adapt ational urge towards 

 artificially protecting himself further and further from the simpler 

 processes of Natural Selection which have dealt so strictly with his 

 progenitors, and of course can only too readily overpower his efforts 

 still. As examples, two different disease-outbreaks in different parts 

 of the world, and each described as new to medicine — are recorded 

 in the same column of the newspaper current as we write; so what 

 new adaptations, of cure and of defence, have their physicians now 

 to seek and try for ? Is not Hygiene, as weU as medicine, very largely 

 a matter of artificial adaptation? 



DARWINISM OR DESIGN 



The celebration by the Linnean Society in 1908 of the jubilee of 

 that memorable evening when Wallace's and Darwin's papers, 

 enunciating the principle of natural selection, were simultaneously 

 presented and supported by Sir Joseph Hooker, will itself long be 

 remembered by all who were fortunate enough to be present. For 

 there, by rare exception to the swiftly changing course of human 

 life, stood all three of the veteran leaders of British science, still hale 

 in body and vigorous in mind, Wallace himself. Hooker and Galton. 

 We wish here to refer to Wallace's World of Life, not only as the 

 expression of a great naturalist's mature convictions, but as a 

 deliverance usefully contrasted with that of his magnanimous 

 collaborator. Wallace had no lack of courage in raising the standard 

 of uncompromising vitalism against Haeckel and Huxley. "Life 

 must be antecedent to organisation, and can only be conceived 

 as indissolubly connected with spirit and with thought and with 

 the cause of the directive energy everywhere manifested in the 

 growth of living things." Nay more, Wallace stood firmly to 

 the end by his theses of the earth as cosmocentric, of life as 

 unique, and of an overruling Mind, a Guiding Power. In his 

 treatment of the objections to the Darwinian theory, he selected 

 as the most important these three: (a) How can the beginnings 

 of new organs be explained? {b) How can variations be co- 

 ordinated ? (c) How have developments beyond utilitarian require- 

 ments been produced? The first of these he boldly dismissed as 

 imaginary; since for him there are no abrupt beginnings. For the 

 second he was confident that the known amount of variation would 

 amply suffice for the adaptation of any dominant species to a norm- 

 ally changing environment; while for the third he placed great 

 weight on Germinal Selection, as an important extension of the 

 theory of Natural Selection. Against Darwin's doctrine of Sexual 

 Selection he remained consistently opposed: "The idea of all these 



