Descent. For they have also witnessed the publication of a 

 number of significant works, which aimed at giving a bet- 

 ter individual explanation than was found in Darwinism. 

 I need bvit recall Naegeli, Eimer, Haacke and a host of 

 others. The most noteworthy feature of these new views 

 regarding theories of Descent, is the constantly spreading 

 conviction that the real determining causes of evolution are 

 to be sought for in the constitution of the organisms 

 themselves, hence in internal principles. This view, how- 

 ever, is not only absolutely and diametrically opposed to 

 Darwinism but completely destructive of it as well. 



The actual circumstances, therefore, are the very re- 

 verse of those pictured by Wagner. Darwinism has been 

 rejected not on account of a lack of research but on ac- 

 count of an abundance of research, which proved its abso- 

 lute insufficiency. 



Besides these "general points of view," as he calls 

 them, Wagner finds two other "considerations of no less 

 importance" for explaining the decay of Darwinism. It is 

 an incontrovertible fact, that the hereditary transmission 

 of acquired characters has in no way been proved. On the 

 contrary after it had at first received a general tacit recog- 

 nition and was postulated by Lamarck, Darwin and 

 Haeckel, it was denied by Weismann. Wagner asserts 

 "that the number of those who have allied themselves with 

 Weismann in this matter is obviously on the increase as 

 is naturally the case, since, to the present day not a single 

 incontestable case of hereditary transmission of acquired 



97 



