y good example of
this, for it is built up _a priori_ on theories and hypotheses, it stands
apart from experimentation, and it twists facts forcibly to its own ends.
It has, however, to be acknowledged that Fleischmann's book is without any
"apologetic" intentions. It holds equally aloof from teleology. To seek
for purposes and aims in nature he holds to be outside the business of
science, as Kant's "Critique of Judgment" suffices to show. After having
been more than a decade under the charm of the theory of selection,
Fleischmann knows its fascination well, but he now regards it as so
erroneous that no one who wishes to do serious work should concern himself
about it at all. Point by point he follows all the details of Darwin's
work, and seeks to analyse the separate views and theories which go to
make up Darwinism as a whole. Darwin's main example of the evolution of
the modern races of pigeons from one ancestral form, _Columba livia_, is,
according to Fleischmann, not only unproved but unprovable.(40) For this
itself is not a unified type. The process of "unconscious selection" by
man is obscure, and it is not demonstrable, especially in regard to
pigeon-breeding. It is a hazy idea which cannot be transferred to the
realm of nature. The Malthusian assumption of the necessity of the
struggle for existence is erroneous. Malthus was wrong in his law of
population as applied to human life, and Darwin was still more mistaken
when he transferred it to the organic world in general. It was mere
theory. Statistics should have been collected, and observations instead of
theories should have been sought for. The alleged superabundance of
organisms is not a fact. The marvellously intertwined conditions in the
economy of nature make the proportion of supply and demand relatively
constant. And even when there is actual struggle for existence, advantages
of situation,(41) which are quite indifferent as far as selection is
concerned, are much more decisive than any variational differences. The
theory does not explain the first origin of new characters, which can only
become advantageous when they have attained to a certain degree of
development. As to the illustrations of the influence of selection given
by Darwin, from the much discussed fictitious cases, in which the fleet
stags select the lithe wolf, to the marvellous mutual adaptations of
insects and flowers, Fleischmann objects that there is not even
theoretical justification for