THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



opposing schools. This opposition has no meaning un- 

 less we understand by it the alternatives of transform- 

 ism — with or without the theory of selection. The one 

 principle that distinguishes Darwinism proper from the 

 older Lamarckism is the struggle for existence and the 

 theory of selection based on it. It is quite wrong to 

 make the test an acceptance or rejection of progressive 

 heredity. Darwin was just as firmly convinced as La- 

 marck or myself of the great importance of the inheri- 

 tance of acquired characters, and particularly of the in- 

 heritance of functional adaptations ; he merely ascribed 

 to it a more restricted sphere of influence than Lamarck. 

 Weismann, however, denies progressive heredity alto- 

 gether, and wants to trace everything to "the omnipo- 

 tence of natural selection." If this view of Weismann 

 and the theory of germ-plasm he has based on it are 

 correct, he alone has the honor of founding a totally new 

 (and in his opinion very fruitful) form of transformism. 

 But it is quite wrong to describe this Weismannism as 

 Neo-Darwinism, as frequently happens in England. It 

 is just as wrong to call Nageli, De Bries, and other 

 modern biologists who reject selection Neo-Lamarckists. 

 If the theory of descent is right, as all competent 

 biologists now admit, it puts on morphology the task of 

 assigning approximately the origin of each living form. 

 It must endeavor to explain the actual organization of 

 each by its past, and to recognize the causes of its modi- 

 fication in the series of its ancestors. I made the first 

 attempt to achieve this difficult task in founding stem- 

 history or phylogeny as an independent historical science 

 in my "General Evolution" (in the second volume of 

 the General Morphology). With it I associated as a 

 second and equally sound part ontogeny; I understood 

 by this the whole science of the development of the 

 individual, both embryology and metamorphology. 

 Ontogeny enjoys the privileges (especially in the way 



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