ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxi 



PART IV 



HYPER-DARWINISM WEISMANN, KIDD 

 / CHAPTER XVIII 



A "FAIRY TALE OF SCIENCE"? 



An intenser assertion of struggle Not on ground of experiment; 

 evidence is ambiguous On ground of a theory of heredity 

 Darwin's theory (Pangenesis) assumed derivation of embryonic 

 qualities from qualities and tissues of parental organism Use- 

 inheritance possible or probable on this view But " Atavism " 

 forced the concession, some " gemmules " had passed on undevel- 

 oped from earlier generations till they found their chance 

 Galton's figures for resemblance to ancestors Hence theories 

 asserting " continuity of the germ plasm " Parable of the hie- 

 rarchy Galton (" Stirp ") does not absolutely deny the possibility 

 of use-inheritance But in Weismann's earlier and more consis- 

 tent views, founded on by Mr. Kidd, amphimixis is the only cause of 

 variation Extrusion of one of the " polar bodies " securing ( ?) 

 non-identity of all offspring of same pair Permutations and com- 

 binations of qualities of unicellular organisms Nature selecting 

 fittest adults, and in them best germ plasm Parable of the 

 suckers Of the Nile No new quality arises, but amount of 

 each telling quality increases Qualities arose originally, Lamarck 

 fashion, from environment, when unicellular life lay open to its 

 pressure Unicellular organisms (propagating by fission) and 

 germ plasm are potentially immortal Correlation alleged between 

 sex and (natural) death; now sex is absent from the unicellular 

 world Natural selection might account for the predominance 

 (if not origin) of sex if Weismann would assume the necessary 

 competition Romanes alleges that natural selection might ac- 

 count for predominance of habit of dying natural death; but 

 would not death by violence sufficiently prevent any race (immersed 

 in the struggle) from falling into wholesale decrepitude ? Origin 

 of sex and death a mystery; or " chance " variation ! or effect of 

 molecular constitution of germ plasm ! Weismann's appeal to 

 " natural selection," while he denies " struggle," is metaphysical 

 in the worst sense Recapitulation, and note of some of Weis- 



