ON THK fiKNKTKJ VIKW oK NATTRE. 



351 



Haeckel's work is, as he hiinsell' admits, highly con- 

 jectural,^ it has done much to extend and po})ulahse the 



whole domain of moderu post- 

 Darwinian biology. The {)roblem 

 is far from being solved, though it 

 is perhaps nearer a solution than 

 the question as to the cause of 

 gravitation. Thirdly, there is the 

 ambitious attempt to construct a 

 general philosophy of life by means 

 of the new principle, or some modi- 

 fication or amplihcation of it. After 

 >.'ewt(jn had discovered universal 

 giaviuition, the attempt was made 

 by Boscovich and the French school 

 of mathematical jihysics to use the 

 idea of attraction at a distance as a 

 general [)hysical theory. Of those 

 who, before or after Darwin, at- 

 tempted the more ambitious task, 

 we may take Herbert Spencer, Ernst 

 Haeckel, and Niigeli as three dis- 

 tinct representatives. They, how- 

 ever, agree in one point — viz., in 

 considering natural selection to be 

 insufficient, and in admitting other 

 agencies, which are largely drawn 

 from the suggestive writings of 

 Lamarck. The section of these 

 philoso])hical writers who consider 

 Lamarck's principles to be more 

 fundamental than Darwin's, and 

 who are laigely repiesented by 

 American naturalists (notably E. 

 T>. Cope and A. Hyatt), are called 

 111 ' i-Lamarckians. The best account 

 of their views will be found in the 

 last chapter of Profes.sor Packard's 

 })ook, ' Lamarck, the Founder of 

 Evolution' (1901). The following 

 passage quoted there (p. 391) from 

 a much earlier memoir (1877) gives 

 a very clear account of the reason- 

 ing of this school : " Darwin's 

 phra.se, ' natural selection,' or Her- 

 bert Sjiencer's term, ' survival of 

 the fittest,' expresses simply the 

 final result, while the process of 

 the origination of the new forms 



which have survived, or been 

 selected by nature, is to be ex- 

 plained by the action of the physi- 

 cal environments of the animals, 

 cou{)led with inheritance - force. 

 The |)hrase8 quoted have Vieen mis- 

 used to sUite the cause, when they 

 simply express the result of the 

 action of a chain of causes which 

 we may, with Herbert Spencer, 

 call the 'environment' of the 

 organism undergoing modification : 

 and therefore a form oi Lamarck- 

 ianism, greatl}' modified by recent 

 scientific discoveries, seems to meet 

 most of the (lifiticulties which arise 

 in accounting for the origination of 

 species and higher groujis of organ- 

 isms." It is also well to note that 

 Mr Wallace, though not a Lamarck- 

 ian, considers the principle of nat- 

 ural selection insufficient especi- 

 allj' to explain the higher develop- 

 ments of mental life. (See 'Dar- 

 winism,' p. 463, &c.) 



' " It is evident that our ' phyl- 

 ogeny ' is and remains an edifice 

 of hypotheses in the same way as 

 her sister, historical geology. For 

 she tries to gain a connected view 

 of the course and causes of events 

 long past, the direct invest igati<jn 

 of which is impossible. Neither 

 observation nor experiment can 

 give us direct information regard- 

 ing the endless processes of change 

 through which the existing animal- 

 and plant -forms have emerged out 

 of lengthy ancesti'al stages. . . . 

 The empirical documents of our 

 history of descent will always 

 remain lai-gely incomplete, however 

 much through continued discoveries 

 our region of knowledge of individ- 

 ual things may increase." (Haeckel, 

 * Systematische Phylogenie,' 1894, 

 vol. i. preface, ]). vi.) 



