DARWIN AND NATURAL SELECTION 49 



It seems ridiculous to suppose that natural 

 selection can actually cause the variations on which 

 it is to operate, yet the claims of some of its sup- 

 porters go as far as that. In the preceding article we 

 have seen that such claims were actually made|during 

 the lifetime of Darwin and repudiated by him. 



If natural selection cannot cause the variations, 

 can any other external agent cause them ? Here 

 we are brought face to face with the great question 

 of the inheritance of acquired conditions, with 

 which it would be quite impossible to deal in this 

 article.* It must suffice to say very briefly that it 

 is as certain as anything can be that mutilations 

 are not inherited ; that there is little valid evi- 

 dence for the inheritance of conditions otherwise 

 acquired, but that there is some evidence that 

 change of environment, extending over a number 

 of generations, may cause the fixation of an ac- 

 quired variation. 



Further, it may, I think, be fairly said that 

 the small amount of positive evidence on this 

 matter does not in any way account for the vari- 

 ations which we know to arise so frequently in 

 the various living things which we see around us. 

 In fact, the impossibility of accounting for these 

 variations by external influences, and the desperate 

 desire to have nothing to do with anything which 

 could savour of a Creative Influence, are the real 

 origin of the mass of unproved and admittedly 

 unprovable assumptions, culminating in his 

 Bi&phorida, which have been put forward by 



* Some account of this matter and of Weismann's views thereon 

 will be found in a later article, pp. 70, seq. 



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