cated. Other means are now said to substantiate it, hence 

 the Darwinian crutches may safely be discarded. The prin- 

 ciple of action twenty or thirty years ago was therefore: 

 a poor explanation is better than no explanation. I cannot 

 understand, how Wagner dares to credit present-day nat- 

 uralists with such motives. 



When he then proceeds to say "that with the advance 

 of the principle of development, new lines were entered up- 

 on, which led primarily to the corroboration and empiric 

 demonstration of the doctrine of Descent, and not of Dar- 

 winism" — that the theory of Darwin was consequently neg- 

 lected and, in fact, forced into the background — "that the 

 labors specifically attributable to Darwinism as compared 

 with the theory of Descent, put the former more and more 

 into a false position to the detriment of its prestige" — 

 when, I say, Wagner has marshalled all these considera- 

 tions to explain the present aversion to Darwinism, he is 

 guilty of a total subversion of facts. The true state of the 

 case is the very contrary. 



The credit given by Wagner to the Darwinian theory 

 for stimulating research, is the very same as I also ac- 

 corded it. The purpose of this research undoubtedly was 

 to substantiate not only the doctrine of evolution in gen- 

 eral, but also the Darwinian hypothesis in particular. To 

 verify this, one need only glance over the various num- 

 bers of the "Kosmos," the periodical, which Haeckel and 

 his associates established for that very purpose and which 

 continued to publish good and bad indiscriminately until 



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