ense the
bare necessaries of life. For a more exhaustive and detailed criticism
of Professor Weismann's position, I would refer the reader to an
admirably clear article by Mr. Sidney H. Vines, which appeared in
_Nature_, October 24, 1889. I can only say that while reading Professor
Weismann's book, I feel as I do when I read those of Mr. Darwin, and of a
good many other writers on biology whom I need not name. I become like a
fly in a window-pane. I see the sunshine and freedom beyond, and buzz up
and down their pages, ever hopeful to get through them to the fresh air
without, but ever kept back by a mysterious something, which I feel but
cannot either grasp or see. It was not thus when I read Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read such articles as Mr.
Vines's just referred to. Love of self-display, and the want of
singleness of mind that it inevitably engenders--these, I suppose, are
the sins that glaze the casements of most men's minds; and from these, no
matter how hard he tries to free himself, nor how much he despises them,
who is altogether exempt?

Finally, then, when we consider the immense mass of evidence referred to
briefly, but sufficiently, by Mr. Charles Darwin, and referred to without
other, for the most part, than off-hand dismissal by Professor Weismann
in the last of the essays that have been recently translated, I do not
see how any one who brings an unbiased mind to the question can hesitate
as to the side on which the weight of testimony inclines. Professor
Weismann declares that "the transmission of mutilations may be dismissed
into the domain of fable." {38} If so, then, whom can we trust? What is
the use of science at all if the conclusions of a man as competent as I
readily admit Mr. Darwin to have been, on the evidence laid before him
from countless sources, is to be set aside lightly and without giving the
clearest and most cogent explanation of the why and wherefore? When we
see a person "ostrichising" the evidence which he has to meet, as clearly
as I believe Professor Weismann to be doing, we shall in nine cases out
of ten be right in supposing that he knows the evidence to be too strong
for him.

THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM--PART III

Now let me return to the recent division of biological opinion into two
main streams--Lamarckism and Weismannism Both Lamarckians and
Weismannists, not to mention mankind in general, admit that the better
adapted to i