To state this doctrine is to arouse instinctive
loathing; it is my fortunate task to maintain that such a nightmare
of waste and death is as baseless as it is repulsive.
The split in biological opinion occasioned by the deadlock to which
Charles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent,
widens rapidly. Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as
a byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Nature
without seeing how hot the contention is between his followers and
those of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to
growing perception that Mr. Darwin should either have gone farther
towards Lamarckism or not so far. In admitting use and disuse as
freely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow of
a system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunate
accidents. In assigning the lion's share of development to the
accumulation of fortunate accidents, he tempted fortuitists to try
to cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denying that the
effects of use and disuse can be inherited at all.
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