148 The Philippine Journal of Science 1916 
thirty years it has been accepted as truth so definitely established 
and generally accepted that any evidence, that is subject to con- 
struction as impairing its validity, attracts an undue amount 
of attention for this reason alone, and is likely to be accepted 
by those to whom the novel appeals with special force, and by 
others who may have escaped thorough grounding in the 
evidence for natural selection. The latter class is a larger one 
than it was some time ago, because the practically universal 
acceptance of natural selection has seemed to make unnecessary 
the presentation of evidence for it with the thoroughness 
that was customary when it was a subject of dispute, or while 
it also made an appeal on the basis of novelty. As examples 
of ideas that have made their appeal largely on the basis of 
their assumed value as evidence against natural selection, there 
may be mentioned the determinate variation heresy based on 
geological evidence, and the mutation idea, when extended be- 
yond its author’s intention and construed as having any relation 
to the validity of the natural-selection principle. 
In general, such attacks attract little or no attention from those 
whose belief in natural selection is thoroughly grounded, for the 
reason that the iteration of familiar truth is not always wel- 
comed, and that in general, any argument against a principle 
that seems to those who appreciate it to be absolutely unassail- 
able, seems hardly worth replying to. In spite of these two 
ideas, it seems to me that, for the sake of economy itself, it 
is occasionally worth while to defend a principle even as widely 
accepted as that of natural selection, for the simple reason that 
intelligent but unqualified acceptance of really fundamental 
principles is always conducive to the efficiency of investigation, 
and that if scientific heresy be too completely ignored, the 
weakening of real scientific foundations may reach a troublesome 
point. Therefore, at the risk of placing myself in the un- 
popular position of an Aristides, I expressed myself publicly 
regarding the unreasonable application of the mutation theory, 
while it was new. Too little attention to this and other similar 
publications about the same time and the continued entertain- 
ment of the novelty of an idea that could be entertained as 
in opposition to natural selection have let the errors grow and 
have recently justified the publication of more careful and ex- 
tensive work in contradiction of the same kind. 
There comes now Dr. John C. Willis, who, as an excellent 
botanist, has accumulated a mass of throughly established and 
very interesting information — valuable if properly construed as 
collateral evidence on the general principle of natural selection, 
