78 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



impossible, and, in the long history of living things, adaptive struct- 

 ures may have been produced, without selection, by the fortuitous 

 coincidence of fortuitous variations, but many generations of readers 

 have approved Swift's assertion that the attempt to advance know- 

 ledge by turning a crank failed to produce a single learned treatise. 

 The presumption against the production of adaptations, incipient 

 or otherwise, by nurture, seems so overwhelming that we are justi- 

 fied in demanding demonstrative evidence, before we accept this 

 explanation of any adaptation. 



They who think that the "inheritance of acquired characters" 

 ■must be a factor in organic evolution, because we find, in living 

 nature, so much that we cannot yet explain without it, would do 

 well to ask themselves whether it would, after all, help them out 

 of any of their difficulties, even if its occurrence were proved. If 

 this is the case, would they not do well to rest on their oars, and 

 to look about them .' For that which they are in search of may 

 prove to be plainly in the sight of those who have the eyes to see. 



An English writer has recently formulated what, he tells us, is 

 the Lamarckian answer to this sort of reasoning. He says: "The 

 assimilation and growth of a muscle under stimulus must be as- 

 cribed to a fundamental property of protoplasm, which it is not 

 the business of Lamarckians or evolutionists of any other school 

 to explain." 



" According to the Lamarckian view all adaptations, at any 

 rate all adjustments concerning whose action and efficacy there is 

 no dispute, have arisen in the same way as the enlargement of a 

 muscle by exercise ; " and, whereas " Brooks supposes that these 

 structural adjustments have to be explained, Lamarckians suppose 

 they are merely the fundamental properties of protoplasm." 



As this writer also says " Brooks has quite failed to understand 

 the Lamarckian view," I shall not attempt to interpret his belief 

 that such an adaptation as the fitness of the eye for vision, con- 

 cerning whose action and efficacy there does not seem to be any 

 dispute, is merely a property of protoplasm ; and I shall content 

 myself with the admission that he is quite right in asserting that 

 Brooks supposes this fitness has to be explained if it can be. He 

 may be pleased, however, to know that a still shorter way with the 

 Darwinian would be to ascribe all things to the cosmic vapor, and, 



