doctrines are not weighted

It can hardly be doubted that one of the “thunderclouds” threatening Darwinism, of which Weismann spoke in 1895, was this examina-tion of Weismannism by Romanes. As the case stood then some fresh strategy was needed if victory for Darwin was to be won, at least so the great leader said. It must be remembered that it was the personal selection of Darwin which was held to be in danger. Accordingly germinal selection was brought forth and remained the basis of Weismann’s later Evolution Theory of 1904 and 1909. Romanes did not live to see or assist in the disproof of this ambitious piece of work so that his “examina-tion” is so far incomplete nu skin hk.







The position of germinal selection is defined in Weismann’s statement that “it is the adaptive requirement itself that produces the useful direction of variation by means of selectional processes within the germ.” Here it is in a nutshell. The theory itself is consistent, and clearness has been added to the earlier evolution theory by the claim that a struggle for nutriment occurs within the fertilised ovum between the innumerable determinants of the different parts, so that maintenance or victory over weaker determinants takes place. Thus we have a survival of the fittest in petto in the germ analogous to that of the individual organisms as we see them. There is of course a resemblance here to the cellular or histonal selection of Roux, but his with the intolerable dogma of the non-inheritance of acquired characters. But ultimately this concep-tion of germinal selection has to come down and bow to the tribunal of facts, and the remark of Weismann on Lamarckism which has been already quoted, “It seems to me that an hypothesis of this kind has performed its service and must be discarded the moment it is found to be at hopeless variance with the facts,” confronts the consistent Weismannian. And I venture to say here that germinal selection is represented by the Eddystone lighthouse of 1756–9 erected by Smeaton nu skin hk.







The grounds for this statement are afforded by numerous facts and experiments, to which in the later chapters I propose to add a few fresh ones, and by a growing body of opinion and authority in favour of Lamarckian factors in evolution.







Three “lighthouses” of this metaphorical sort have thus been afforded by the work of Weismann, represented by the Pharos of old, Winstanley’s Eddystone lighthouse and that of Smeaton .



Authority.