INADEQUACY OF NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 671 



will be unacceptable. These simultaneous appropriate variations 

 of the co-operative parts in sizes, shapes, and proportions, are 

 supposed to be effected by simultaneous variations in the " deter- 

 minants " of the ^erm-plasms ; and in the absence of an assigned 

 physical cause, this implies a fortuitous concourse of appropriate 

 variations, which carries us back to a " fortuitous concourse of 

 atoms." This may just as well be extended to the entire organ- 

 ism. The old hypothesis of special creations is more consistent 

 and comprehensible. 



To rebut my inference drawn from the distribution of dis- 

 criminativeness. Professor Weismann uses not an argument but 

 the blank form of an argument. The ability to discriminate one 

 twenty-fourth of an inch by the tongue-tip may have been useful 

 to the ape : no conceivable use being even suggested. And then 

 the great body of my argument derived from the distribution of 

 discriminativeness over the skin, which amply suffices, is wholly 

 ignored. 



The tacit challenge I gave to name some facts in support of 

 the hypothesis of panmixia — or even a solitary fact — is passed 

 by. It remains a pure speculation having no basis but Pro- 

 fessor Weismann's " opinion." When from the abstract statement 

 of it we pass to a concrete test, in the case of the whale, we 

 find that it necessitates an unproved and improbable assumption 

 respecting plus and minus variations ; that it ignores the unceas- 

 ing tendency to reversion ; and that it implies an effect out of all 

 proportion to the cause. 



It is curious what entirely opposite conclusions men may 

 draw from the same evidence. Professor Weismann thinks he 

 has shown that the " last bulwark of the Lamarckian principle is 

 untenable." Most readers will hold with me that he is, to use 

 the mildest word, premature in so thinking. Contrariwise my 

 impression is that he has not shown either this bulwark or any 

 other bulwark to be untenable; but rather that while his assault 

 has failed it has furnished opportunity for strengthening sundry 

 of the bulwarks. 



IV. 



Among those who follow a controversy to its close, not one in 

 a hundred turns back to its beginning to see whether its chief 

 theses have been dealt with. Very often the leading arguments 

 of one disputant, seen by the other to be unanswerable, are quietly 

 ignored, and attention is concentrated on subordinate arguments 

 to which replies, actually or seemingly valid, can be made. The 

 original issue is thus commonly lost sight of. 



