10 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



was undermined by the teachings of Weismann. 

 Difficulties for which the Lamarckian theory had 

 been invoked were met by the hypothesis of 

 Organic Selection suggested by Baldwin and 

 Osborn, and in England by Lloyd Morgan. 

 Weismann's contention that inherent characters 

 are alone transmissible by heredity has also re- 

 ceived strong support from the immense body of 

 cytological, Mendelian, and mutationist work to 

 which the present volume bears such eloquent tes- 

 timony. Finally, the flourishing school of Amer- 

 ican psychology, under the leadership of William 

 James and James Mark Baldwin, accepts, and in 

 accepting helps to confirm, the theory of Natural 

 Selection. 



ERASMUS DAEWIN AND LAMARCK 



Professor Henry F. Osborn, in his interest- 

 ing work From the Greeks to Darwin, con- 

 cludes that Lamarck was unaware of Erasmus 

 Darwin's Zoonomia, and that the parallelism of 

 thought is a coincidence.^ The following passage 

 from a letter^ written to Huxley probably in 

 1859, and published since the appearance of Pro- 

 fessor Osborn's book, indicates that Charles Dar- 

 win suspected the French naturalist of borrowing 

 from his grandfather : — 



' From the Greeks to Darwin, New York, 1894, pp. 1S2-S5. Pro- 

 fessor Osborn shows that on p. 145 Erasmus Darwin made use of 

 the term " acquired " in the sense of " acquired characters " ; 

 " changement acquis " is the form employed by Lamarck. 



" More Letters of Charles Darwin,, I, p. 12S. 



