ically Darwinian researches.
Since the thoughts of Darwin first found expression these researches
have been most abundant and their results have been consigned to the
printer's ink. No doubt--and this is the salient point, which Wagner
passes over in complete silence--they have been of service only to the
doctrine of Descent in general, and in spite of the energetic efforts
of the Darwinians, they have never led to the ardently desired proof
from facts of the hypothesis of selection. This and no other is the
state of the case.

In view of these vain endeavors, however, intelligent investigators
have gradually become perplexed and have turned away from Darwinism,
not because they have lost interest in it nor even because they no
longer feel the need of it to assist the doctrine of Descent, but for
the one sole reason that its insufficiency has become more and more
apparent and that all experiments undertaken on its behalf have made
the fact clearer and clearer that the first criticism of the great
naturalists of the sixties and seventies was perfectly justified.

In forming a judgment concerning the whole question it cannot but be a
matter of the utmost significance, that men have turned away from
Darwinism to entirely different theories of Descent. It is a mistake to
suppose, as Wagner would have us suppose, that the last decades have
produced nothing but generalities regarding the doctrine of Descent.
For they have also witnessed the publication of a number of significant
works, which aimed at giving a better individual explanation than was
found in Darwinism. I need but recall Naegeli, Eimer, Haacke and a host
of others. The most noteworthy feature of these new views regarding
theories of Descent, is the constantly spreading conviction that the
real determining causes of evolution are to be sought for in the
constitution of the organisms themselves, hence in internal principles.
This view, however, is not only absolutely and diametrically opposed to
Darwinism but completely destructive of it as well.

The actual circumstances, therefore, are the very reverse of those
pictured by Wagner. Darwinism has been rejected not on account of a
lack of research but on account of an abundance of research, which
provided its absolute insufficiency.

Besides these "general points of view," as he calls them, Wagner finds
two other "considerations of no less importance" for explaining the
decay of Darwinism. It is an incontrovert