

DARWINISM DEFENDED. 131 



that this feeling really depends not so much on Haeckel's 

 attitude and speculative writing in zoology as in his unpar- 

 donable intrusion into politics and religion ; the Social- 

 Democrats and the Free-Thinkers have found a helpful and 

 willing scientific champion in Haeckel. And this is sin 

 superlative in rigorous minds ! As a matter of fact, how- 

 ever, biologists generally are agreed that Haeckel's daring 

 speculations and reckless progress in advance of positions 

 grounded on observed fact have been, in a way, always repre- 

 hensible and dangerous to the fair fame of biological science. 

 But, to my mind, biologists may also fairly agree that this 

 very activity and speculative daring of Haeckel have in- 

 spired much genuine biological investigation (for the sake 

 of denying or confirming his speculations) and have led to 

 a salutary reactionary critical attitude toward other biologi- 

 cal speculations and hypotheses. It is a rare ism in any 

 science or philosophy that yields nothing good. 



Weismannism is wholly different from Haeckelism. It 

 has only in common with it that it is, in part, also daringly 

 speculative. But the speculations primarily interest neither 

 Free-Thinkers nor Social-Democrats. They have to do 

 with the ultimate structure and behaviour of protoplasm, 

 especially germinal protoplasm, and with the intimate proc- 

 esses of heredity and variation. 



Weismann first attempted to free Darwin's general theory 

 of modification and species-forming from all taint of La- 

 marckism ; an attempt which resulted in his 

 theories^ 1111 ' 8 apparently successful overthrowal of the com- 

 monly accepted theory of the inheritance of 

 acquired characters, a theory or assumption which is a 

 fundamental and indispensable part of the general Lamarck- 

 ian theory. (Lamarckism and the inheritance of acquired 

 characters are explained and briefly discussed in chapter x of 

 this book.) On the strength of this success Weismann pro- 

 posed the doctrine of the Allmacht of natural selection ; that 



