94 DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



never hesitated to take each particular character of an 

 animal or plant, and dress it up in more perfect gar- 

 ments, while the body of the species, if I may so speak, 

 has been left as it was before. There has been a con- 

 tinual tampering with the characters of the organism with 

 the laudable intention of doing with them that which na- 

 ture herself seems unable to do, namely, to dissociate them 

 from the rest of the organisation and perfect them in this 

 way or in that. It is this meddling with the fluctuating 

 characters of the species that has been the characteristic 

 procedure of the Darwinians, in their attempt to show how 

 new species have been created. In contrast to this method, 

 the theory of the survival of species assumes that a form 

 once made does not have its individual parts later disso- 

 ciated and adjusted to better fit the external needs of the 

 species. Such a new form can change only by becoming 

 again a new species with a new combination of characters ; 

 some of which may be more developed in one direction than 

 before, others less, etc. 



"New forms on the Darwinian theory are supposed to be 

 created by a process of picking out of individual differences. 

 If, in addition to this, Darwin supposed that at times varie- 

 ties and species crowd each other out nothing new is thereby 

 created.* On the other hand the theory of the survival of 

 definite variations refers the creation of new forms to an- 



*"If the survival of certain species determines, in a metaphorical 

 sense, the kinds of future mutations that occur, the course of evo- 

 lution may appear to be guided by selection or survival ; but, how- 

 ever true it may be that selection acts by lopping off certain 

 branches, and limits to this extent the kinds of possible future muta- 

 tions, the origin of the new forms remains still a different question 

 from the question of the survival of certain species. This negative 

 action of selection is not the process that most Darwinians have 

 had in mind as the source of the origin of new species. It is true 

 that Weismann believes that selection of individual differences deter- 

 mines the origin of new species, and that the creation of these new 

 species determines the future course of variations in the same direc- 

 tion, but his argument that fluctuating variations can go on indefi- 



