﻿Introduction. 9 



should endeavour to hide certain parts of Darwin's 

 teaching, and give undue prominence to others. In 

 the second place, it appears to me still more un- 

 desirable that this should be done — as it usually is 

 done — for the purpose of making it appear that 

 Darwin's teaching did not really differ very much 

 from that of Wallace and Weismann on the important 

 points in question. I myself believe that Darwin's 

 judgement with regard to all these points will 

 eventually prove more sound and accurate than 

 that of any of the recent would-be improvers upon 

 his system ; but even apart from this opinion 

 of my own, it is undesirable that Darwin's views 

 should be misrepresented, whether the misrepre- 

 sentation be due to any unfavourable bias against one 

 side of his teaching, or to sheer carelessness in the 

 reading of his books. Yet the new school of evo- 

 lutionists, to which allusion has now so frequently been 

 made, speak of their own modifications of Darwin's 

 teaching as "pure Darwinism," in contradistinction 

 to what they call " Lamarckism." In other words, 

 they represent the principles of " Darwinism " as 

 standing in some kind of opposition to those of 

 " Lamarckism " : the Darwinian principle of natural 

 selection, they think, is in itself enough to account for 

 all the facts of adaptation in organic nature. There- 

 fore they are eager to dispense with the Lamarckian 

 principle of the inherited effects of use and disuse, 

 together with the direct influence of external conditions 

 of life, and all or any other causes of modification which 

 either have been, or in the future may possibly be, 

 suggested. Now, of course, there is no reason why 

 any one should not hold these or any other opinions 



