PRINCIPAL ATTEMPTS AT EXPLANATION 151 



What was good in Lamarck's doctrine was taken 

 over by the neo-Lamarckians and defended as victorious 

 over materialism in general and Darwinism in particular 

 viz. the doctrine of ' Autoteleology ' of the organisms, 

 as it is now called. 



If, however, neo-Lamarckism be regarded as a 

 theory of evolution, it is a terrible mixture of assump- 

 tions and postulates without any comprehensible basis 

 at all. Nowhere, whether in the works of France, 

 Pauly, or Wagner, do we find any thorough presentation 

 of the results of palseontological research. In its place 

 they put forward as their chief argument the phrase, 

 that evolution must embrace indiscriminately every- 

 thing man, animals, and plants all of which have 

 been evolved from common ancestors. 



This they demonstrate thus : 



The similarity of the organisms, especially with regard 

 to the ' psyche/ which alone renders possible and guides 

 the evolution, must be explained by a common origin. 



Now, however, all living beings, and perhaps also the 

 so-called inorganic bodies, possess a ' psyche/ and one 

 provided with faculties of recognition, effort, and decision. 

 These faculties are naturally not of the same perfection 

 in plants, animals, and man, but are in no way essen- 

 tially different from each other. The ' psyche ' of plants, 

 animals, and man, presents therefore a single series in 

 which the fundamental peculiarities of all organisms 

 (viz. decision and will) are gradationally perfected. 

 They are therefore similar, especially in the 'psyche/ 

 the basal factor of all evolution. 



