EVOLUTION 1081 



strange and beautiful developments of plumage, of ornaments, and 

 of colour being primarily due to surplus vitality and growth-power 

 in dominant species, and especially in the males, seems a fairly 

 adequate solution of the problem." Further than this, he followed 

 Woodward and the American paLxontologists, in their insistence 

 upon the recurrence of characters of old age in species towards the 

 end of their geological range, and this from graptolites and trilobites, 

 from ammonites and other molluscs, to the great reptiles of the less 

 remote past, and thence up to the exaggeratedly sabre-toothed 

 tiger or the heavy-horned elk of comparatively recent times. 



But this surely is "neo-Lamarckianism", "bathmism" — anything 

 but orthodox and traditional Darwinism. Far from being an exten- 

 sion of it, it is surely a surrender to conceptions of life-progress 

 combated by every other Darwinian and different altogether from 

 those predominant in the past fifty years. True, they may be none 

 the worse for that : but in Wallace we witnessed a veritable mutation 

 of Darwinism, and no inconsiderable development of its co-discoverer 

 and leading exponent. 



Nor does Wallace's contrast with Darwin and Darwinians end 

 here. Birds and insects are reviewed "as proofs of an organising and 

 directing life principle"; and the famous thesis which concluded 

 his Natural Selection in 1870 — that "some of man's physical charac- 

 ters and many of his moral and mental faculties could not have been 

 produced and developed to their actual perfection by the law of 

 natural selection alone because they are not of survival value in the 

 struggle for existence'— \s not only restated, but extended to "the 

 whole World of Life". "To afford any rational explanation of its 

 phenomena we require to postulate the continuous action and guid- 

 ance of higher intelligence; and, further, that these have probably 

 been working towards a single end — the development of intellectual, 

 moral, and spiritual beings." Paley surely could ask no more; and 

 the elaboration of this thesis is astounding for a Darwinian, and 

 contrasted against that "all- sufficiency of natural selection" of which 

 we have heard so long. Indeed, Wallace seems to have thought of 

 the progress of evolution, as conducted b}^ a whole hierarchy of 

 spiritual existences, from the Infinite determining the broad outlines 

 of the universe, through descending series of angels, each allotted 

 its appropriate division of the creative task! Here in fact is the 

 Demiurgos of old: here appear anew "thrones, dominations, prince- 

 doms, virtues, powers" ; but where now is the great goddess Natural 

 Selection? At least how much of her old sufficiency for the produc- 

 tion of new species remains to her ? 



Is there any way of reconciling such contrasted teachings? Shall 

 we simply cling to one position or to the other, or with some, refuse 

 faith to both doctrines, as offering us not only one mythology, but 

 two? Not so: we are now on the threshold of a new period of lif^- 



