arguments to diminish
the force of the objection."[273]

We have cited the foregoing conclusions and opinions of upwards of forty
working biologists, many of whom were brought up, so to speak, in the
Darwinian faith, to show that the pendulum of evolutionary thought is
swinging away from the narrow and restricted conception of natural
selection, pure and simple, as the sole or most important factor, and
returning in the direction of Lamarckism.

We may venture to say of Lamarck what Huxley once said of Descartes,
that he expressed "the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three
centuries after" him. Only the change of belief, due to the rapid
accumulation of observed facts, has come in a period shorter than "two
or three centuries;" for, at the end of the very century in which
Lamarck, whatever his crudities, vagueness, and lack of observations and
experiments, published his views, wherein are laid the foundations on
which natural selection rests, the consensus of opinion as to the direct
and indirect influence of the environment, and the inadequacy of natural
selection as an initial factor, was becoming stronger and deeper-rooted
each year.

We must never forget or underestimate, however, the inestimable value of
the services rendered by Darwin, who by his patience, industry, and rare
genius for observation and experiment, and his powers of lucid
exposition, convinced the world of the truth of evolution, with the
result that it has transformed the philosophy of our day. We are all of
us evolutionists, though we may differ as to the nature of the efficient
causes.

FOOTNOTES:

[204] Vol. ii., p. 167, 1871.

[205] Vol. ii., p. 195.

[206] Vol. i., Sec. 166, p. 456.

[207] _The Factors of Organic Evolution_, 1895, p. 460.

[208] _Schoepfungegeschichte_, 1868. _The History of Creation_, New York,
ii., p. 355.

[209] Alcide d'Orbigny, _Paleontologie francaise_, Paris, 1840-59.

[210] Abstract in Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History,
xvii., December 16, 1874.

[211] _Zeitschr. der deutsch. geol. Gesellschaft_, 1875.

[212] _Palaeontologica Indica_. Jurassic Fauna of Kutch. I. Cephalopoda,
pp. 242-243. (See Hyatt's _Genesis of the Arietidae_, pp. 27, 42.)

[213] "Genera of Fossil Cephalopods," Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist.,
xxii., April 4, 1883, p. 265.

[214] "Revision of the North American Poriferae." Memoirs Bost. Soc. Nat.
Hist., ii., part iv., 1877.

[215] _Three Cruises of th