INTRODUCTORY: "DEATH-BED OF DARWINISM." 7 



chorus of criticism and protest, and wholly to stop one's 

 ears to these criticisms is to refuse enlightenment and to 

 show prejudice. I have thought it, therefore, worth while 

 to try to anticipate the coming of fragmentary 

 and disturbing extracts from the rapidly in- 

 creasing mass of recent anti-Darwinian litera- 

 ture by presenting in this book a summary account not alone 

 of these modern criticisms, but of the answers to them by the 

 steadfast Darwinians, and of the concessions and supporting 

 hypotheses which the supporters of both sides have been led 

 to offer during the debates. I shall try to give a fair state- 

 ment of the recent attacks on, and the defence and present 

 scientific standing of, the familiar Darwinian theories, and 

 to give also concise expositions, with some critical comment, 

 of the more important new, or newly remodelled alternative 

 and auxiliary theories of species-forming and descent, such 

 as heterogenesis, orthogenesis, isolation, etc., and an esti- 

 mate of their degree of acceptance by naturalists. 



APPENDIX. 



1 Dennert, E., "Vom Sterbelager des Darwinismus/' Stuttgart, 

 1903. An intemperate and unconvincing but interesting brief against 

 Dennett's in- the Darwinian factors, i. e., the selection theories, in 

 temperate attack evolution. Author fully accepts the theory of descent, 

 on Darwinism. but in no Degree the Darwinian causal explanation of 

 this descent. "Was ich in diesen Berichten nachzuweisen suche, 

 ist die Tatsache, dass der, Darwinismus nunmehr bald der Ver- 

 gangenheit, der Geschichte angehort, dass wir an seinem Sterbe- 

 lager stehen und dass auch seine Freunde sich eben anschicken, 

 ihm wenigstens noch ein anstandiges Begrabnis zu sichern" (p. 4). 

 The valuable thing about the paper is that it is largely given to a 

 gathering together of the anti-Darwinian opinions and declarations 

 of numerous, mostly well-known and reputably placed biologists. 

 Some of these declarations are interpreted by Dr. Dennert in a way 

 that would probably hardly be wholly acceptable to the declarers, but 

 for the most part the anti-Darwinian beliefs of these biologists are 

 unmistakably revealed by their own words. Among the biologists 

 and biological philosophers thus agglomerated into the camp of 



