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PROF. ERNEST W. MACE-RIDE, M.A., F.R.S., ON 



ourselves, in their search for Truth. They are seeking step by step 

 to acquire knowledge from a study of Nature itself, and knowledge 

 so acquired must throw an immense amount of light on Revelation. 

 This is a very different method of study to the acceptance of a 

 " theory " and the endeavour to make Nature fit in with that theory. 

 I particularly wish to point out that the Lecturer has repeatedly 

 told us in his paper, when speaking of " Darwinism," that the 

 theory of Organic Evolution stands or falls on the truth, or untruth, 

 of the assertion that characters acquired through the struggle for 

 existence, or by the change of environment, can be, or are being, 

 passed on. If these acquired characters cannot be transmitted 

 there is no possibility of a progressive development, nor of any 

 evolution of the complex from the simple, or of higher organisms 

 from lower. Unless indeed the original form of living matter, 

 assumed by many to have been so simple and structureless, were 

 endowed with all the potentiality of a wonderful variation no 

 change could have taken place ; but it must clearly be borne in mind 

 that such a form of Evolution as this was not Darwin's view, and is 

 not what we know as "Darwinism." 



With all due deference to the Professor, I claim that no one is 

 able to produce any evidence to-day in the plant world of characters 

 acquired from without being passed on to succeeding generations. 

 The Professor says that a good many cases have been recorded, but 

 we want the evidence, and it is impossible to find this. Professor 

 Bateson, the President of the British Association for this year, some 

 of whose research work I have been privileged to watch, says in his 

 Presidential Address : 



" Every theory of Evolution must be such as to accord with the 

 facts of physics and chemistry, a primary necessity to which our 

 predecessors paid small heed. For them the unknown was a rich mine 

 of possibilities an which they could freely draw." (The italics are mine.) 

 " For us it is rather an impenetrable mountain out of which the 

 truth can be chipped in rare and isolated fragments." 



Now Mendelism is not based upon an hypothesis (such as the 

 transmission of acquired characters) as Darwinism is. Professor 

 Bateson knows perfectly well that if the evidence he acquires 

 " chipped in rare and isolated fragments" from the unknown, is 

 substantiated, then Darwinism must go, although it has so long " held 

 the field " in the realm of thought. We can only go step by step in 



