130 DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



of the ill judgment and rash enthusiasm of certain too 

 ardent and too conspicuous friends of Darwinism, the so- 

 called neo-Darwinians with this salutary restriction of 

 diffuseness in account, "Darwinism Defended" may be con- 

 fined to fewer pages than have been devoted to "Darwinism 

 Attacked" without suggesting by this brevity any necessary 

 weakness in the Darwinian position. 



Let us give our first attention to the Darwinian conces- 

 sions those concessions which the biological world has 

 Eeaction practically agreed have been made necessary by 

 against ultra- the steady criticism of the exaggeration and 

 magnification, almost wholly post-Darwinian in 

 appearance, of the Darwinian factors in evolution. It is 

 strange, but wholly true, that the modern reaction and revolt 

 against Darwinism is chiefly due to the activity and attitude 

 taken by certain of its over-ardent friends. Weismann, by 

 denying validity to any other evolutionary factor than the 

 natural selection of purely congenital variations, and by the 

 development to an illogical and untenable extreme of his 

 theory of the independence and continuity of the germ- 

 plasm, precipitated the revolt and furnished the enemy with 

 the very weapons needed to overcome neo-Darwinism. 

 The evolution champion Haeckel, although not at all a 

 Weismannian Darwinian, has also by his daring and reck- 

 less speculative development of certain phases of evolution- 

 ary thought, especially in its relation to sociology and 

 religious philosophy, and by his obstinate adherence to, and 

 reiteration of, certain long discredited more strictly biological 



dogmas of evolutionary science, contributed to 

 Haeokeli 



produce an irritation and antagonistic activity 

 among biologists, especially in Germany, which has helped 

 make many friends for the anti-Darwinian party. "Der 

 Haeckelismus in der Zoologie," '" as Semper originally 

 phrased it, is the object of a curiously bitter and often- 

 expressed contempt in German biological circles. I fancy 



