CRITIQUE OF DARWINISM 247 
existence due to the fortuitous possession of fortunate congenital 
differences (variations). The nine hundred and ninety with unfortu- 
nate congenital variations are extinguished in the struggle and with 
them the opportunity for the perpetuation (by transmission to the 
offspring) of their particular variations. There are thus left ten to 
reproduce their advantageous variations. The offspring of the ten of 
course will vary in their turn, but will vary around the new and 
already proved advantageous parental condition: among the thou- 
sand, say, offspring of the original saved ten the same limitations of 
* space and food will again work to the killing off before maturity of 
nine hundred and ninety, leaving the ten best equipped to reproduce. 
This repeated and intensive selection leads to a slow but steady and 
certain modification through the successive generations of the form 
and functions of the species; a modification always toward adapta- 
tion, toward fitness, toward a moulding of the body and its behaviour 
to safe conformity with externa] conditions. The exquisite adapta- 
tion of the parts and functions of the animal and plant as we see it 
every day to our infinite admiration and wonder has all come to exist 
through the purely mechanical, inevitable weeding out and selecting 
by Nature (by the environmental determining of what may and what 
may not live) through uncounted generations in unreckonable time. 
This is Darwin’s causo-mechanica] theory to explain the transforma- 
tion of species and the infinite variety of adaptive modification. A 
rigorous automatic Natural Selection is the essential idea in Darwin- 
ism, at least in Darwinism as it is held by the present-day followers 
of Darwin. 
OBJECTIONS TO DARWINISM 
1. Darwin in a Jetter to his friend Hooker (January 11, 1844) 
expresses his contempt of Lamarck’s ideas in the following words: 
“Heaven defend me from Lamarck’s nonsense of a ‘tendency to pro- 
gression,’ ‘adaptations from the slow willing of animals,’ etc..... 
Lamarck’s work appeared to me to be extremely poor; I got not a 
fact or idea from it.” 
In spite of these views Darwin’s Origin of Species is interlarded 
with Lamarckian explanations. Whenever the author feels the short- 
comings of the selection factor he lapses into an explanation involving 
the idea that the effects of use and disuse of organs are inherited. 
Followers of Darwin, especially Weismann, felt this to be the chief 
defect in the fabric of Darwinism and bent their efforts chiefly toward 
purging Darwinism of all taint of Lamarckism. 
