24 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



ity of criticisms on the Origin are, in my opinion, not 

 worth the paper they are printed on." 



From the very jfirst the most extraordinarily 

 crude and ill-considered suggestions were put for- 

 ward by those who were unable to recognize the 

 value of the theory of Natural Selection. A 

 good example is to be found in Andrew Mur- 

 ray's principle of a sexual selection based on con- 

 trast, — " the effort of nature to preserve the typ- 

 ical medium of the race." ^ And even in these 

 later years the wildest imaginings may be put 

 forward in all seriousness as the interpretation of 

 the world of living organisms. Thus in Beccari's 

 interesting work on Borneo,^ the author com- 

 pares the infancy and growth of the organic world 

 with the development and education of an indi- 

 vidual. In youth the individual learns easily, 

 being unimpeded by the force of habits, while 

 " with age heredity acts more strongly, instincts 

 prevail, and adaptation to new conditions of ex- 

 istence and to new ideas becomes more difficult; 

 in a word, it is much less easy to combat hered- 

 itary tendencies." Similarly in the state of ma- 

 turity now reached by the organic world Beccari 

 beheves that the power of adaptation is well-nigh 

 non-existent. Heredity, through long accumula- 

 tion in the course of endless generations, has be- 

 come so powerful that species are now stereo- 

 typed and cannot undergo advantageous changes. 



» Life and Letters, II, p. 261. 



" Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo, London, 1904. 

 English translation, pp. 209-16. 



