DARWINISM ATTACKED. 93 



compared with those whose arraignment of selection is 

 chiefly a protest against its assumption of altogether an 

 undue share of influence in species-forming, and whose 

 principal attempt is to reduce selection to a secondary place 

 among evolutionary factors, giving first place to that influ- 

 ence or those influences which determine the character and 

 direction of variation. Still the totally anti-Darwinian 

 critics are not few, and are not without ingenuity and 

 capacity in debate. 



But better justified by what we know to-day and far saner 

 in their estimate of the Darwinian factors are such critics 

 as Delage and Morgan. "The conclusion of 

 this criticism," says Dfiiag*, 28 at the end of a 

 detailed critical discussion of the "true role of 

 selection," "is that selection is jowe^less^ to form sgecies. 

 Its role, however, is not mil, but it is limited lo the sup- 

 pression of variations radically bad, and to the maintaining 

 of the species in its normal character. Far from being an 1 

 instrument for the evolution of species it guarantees their * 

 fixity." And elsewhere he says : "Species come from fixed 

 variations. The formation of species is due ordinarily to 

 general variation [a conception of change much like that of 

 de Vries's mutations and sudden fixed origin of elementary 

 species], very rarely to strong individual variation [sports or 

 discontinuous variations], and never to weak individual 

 variation [fluctuating or Darwinian variation]. 



Morgan 29 in a recent popular essay in which he takes a 



strong stand against natural selection as a species-forming 



Mor an's ad- ^ actor an< ^ m favour of "definite variations" 



verse criticism of (de Vriesian mutations) concludes as follows: 



In the Preceding pages I have tried to bring 

 lection. m t o contrast the point of view of the 



Darwinian school and the newer conception of the sur- 

 vival of elementary species. I have tried to show what 

 .selection has meant to the selectionists. They have 



