1890 OBJECTIONS TO THEORY CONSmERED 211 



the sole cause of adaptive structure, and expressly 

 discarding the Darwinian recognition of use and dis- 

 use, I think they are doing harm to natural selection 

 theory itself. Moreover, because I do not see any 

 sufficient reason as yet to budge from the real 

 Darwinian standpoint (Weismann has added nothing 

 to the facts which were known to Charles Darwin), 

 the post-Darwinians accuse me of moving away from 

 Darwinian principles. But it is they who are mov- 

 ing, and, because they see a change in our relative 

 positions, affirm that it is I. In point of fact, my 

 position has never varied in the least, and my con- 

 fession of faith would still foUow, in eveiy detail, that 

 given on p. 4'21 of " Origin,' 6th ed., which, it seems 

 to me, might also be regarded as prophetic no less 

 than retrospective. 



If I did not say all this in my paper in physio- 

 logical selection, it is only because I never conceived 

 the possibihty of my being accused of trying to under- 

 mine natural selection ; and, therefore, I only stated 

 as briefly as possible what my relations were to it. 

 Yet it seems to me that this statement was clear 

 enough if Wallace had not come down with his pre- 

 posterous ' Romanes versus Darwin.' At all events. 

 it is not in my power — or, I beheve, in that of any- 

 body else — to express more strongly than I now have 

 in • Xatm-e," in answer to Dyer, what I do hold about 

 natural selection in its relation to physiological selec- 

 tion, sexual selection, and other subordinate principles. 

 Of course, if there were a debate on these lines at the 

 B.A., I should get my part of it pubhshed somewhere. 

 As far as I can honestly see, my ' position ' is abso- 



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