ogy,
from prehistoric animal and plant remains. He makes not the least
mention of the indirect proofs taken from ontogenetic development or
comparative anatomy, to which the Darwinians and advocates of Descent
love so much to appeal, because they feel that the real inductive proof
is lacking and totally fails to sustain their position. Hertwig next
points out that the problem of Descent stirred scientific as well as
lay circles twice during the past century. He then pays Lamarck and
Darwin the necessary tribute, at which we cannot take offense since he
was reared in the Darwinian atmosphere of Jena. I also willingly admit
that Darwinism served science as a "powerful ferment," even if I must
emphasize just as decidedly how harmful it was that this "ferment" was
introduced into lay circles at an unseasonable time by the apostles of
materialism. For while it was very well adapted to bring about in
educated circles a fermentation which produced beneficial results, in
uncritical lay-circles this ferment produced nothing but a corruption
of world-views.

Hertwig then designates "Struggle for Existence," Survival of the
Fittest, and Selection, as "very indefinite expressions." "With too
general terms, one does not explain the individual case or produces
only the appearance of an explanation whereas in every case the true
causative relations remain in the dark. But it is the duty of
scientific investigation to establish for each observed effect the
prevenient cause, or more correctly, since nothing results from a
single cause, to discover the various causes."

"The origin of the world of organisms from natural causes, however, is
certainly an unusually complicated and difficult problem. It is just as
little capable of being solved by a single magic formula as every
disease is of yielding to a panacea. By the very act of proclaiming the
omnipotence of natural selection, Weismann found he was forced to the
admission that: "as a rule we cannot furnish the proof that a definite
adaptation has originated through natural selection," in other words:
We know nothing in reality of the complexity of causes which has
produced the given phenomenon. So we may on the contrary, with Spencer,
speak of the "Impotence of Natural Selection.""

"In this scientific struggle with which the past century closed, it
seems necessary to distinguish between the doctrine of evolution and
the theory of selection. They are based on entirely different
pri