When the public
had once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and wherein
Mr. Charles Darwin had differed from him, it became impossible for
Charles-Darwinians to remain where they were, nor is it easy to see
what course was open to them except to cast about for a theory by
which they could get rid of use and disuse altogether. Weismannism,
therefore, is the inevitable outcome of the straits to which
Charles-Darwinians were reduced through the way in which their
leader had halted between two opinions.
This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards,
have kept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr.
Darwin so much in the background. Unwillingness to make this
understood is nowhere manifested more clearly than in Dr. Francis
Darwin's life of his father. In this work Lamarck is sneered at
once or twice and told to go away, but there is no attempt to state
the two cases side by side; from which, as from not a little else, I
conclude that Dr. Francis Darwin has descended from his father with
singularly little modification.
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