DARWINISM ATTACKED. 93 



compared with those whose arraignment of selection is 

 chiefly a protest against its assumption of altogether an 

 undue share of influence in species-forming, and whose 

 principal attempt is to reduce selection to a secondary place 

 among evolutionary factors, giving first place to that influ- 

 ence or those influences which determine the character and 

 direction of variation. Still the totally anti-Darwinian 

 critics are not few, and are not without ingenuity and 

 capacity in debate. 



But better justified by what we know to-day and far saner 

 in their estimate of the Darwinian factors are such critics 

 as Delage and Morgan. "The conclusion of 

 tnis criticism," says Delage, 28 at the end of a 

 detailed critical discussion of the "true role of 

 selection," "is that selection is powerless to form species. 

 Its role, however, is not mil, but it is limited to the sup- 

 pression of variations radically bad, and to the maintaining 

 of the species in its normal character. Far from being an 

 instrument for the evolution of species it guarantees their 

 fixity." And elsewhere he says : "Species come from fixed 

 variations. The formation of species is due ordinarily to 

 general variation [a conception of change much like that of 

 de Vries's mutations and sudden fixed origin of elementary 

 species], very rarely to strong individual variation [sports or 

 discontinuous variations], and never to weak individual 

 variation [fluctuating or Darwinian variation]. 



Morgan 29 in a recent popular essay in which he takes a 

 strong stand against natural selection as a species-forming 

 Morgan's ad- ^ actor an d in favour of "definite variations" 

 verse criticism of (de Vriesian mutations) concludes as follows: 

 ing v P alne of s "I* 1 tne preceding pages I have tried to bring 

 lection. j n |- o contrast the point of view of the 



Darwinian school and the newer conception of the sur- 

 vival of elementary species. I have tried to show what 

 .selection has meant to the selectionists. They have 



