We may add that the position which we occupy will not be affected even if the Lamarckians do succeed eventually in proving that some acquired characters are really inherited. Such proof would merely help to elucidate some of the problems which confront the biologist. Thus the question of the inheritance of acquired characters, while full of interest, has no very important bearing on the question of the making of species.
The Wallaceians hold the doctrines which have been set forth above as those of the Neo-Darwinian school. It is incorrect to call those who pin their faith to the all-sufficiency of natural selection Neo-Darwinians, because Darwin at no time believed that natural selection explained everything. Darwin moreover was a Lamarckian to the extent that he was inclined to think that acquired characteristics could be inherited. His theory of inheritance by gemmules involved the assumption that such characters are inherited. It is Wallace who out-Darwins Darwin, who preaches the all-sufficiency of natural selection. For this reason we dub the school which holds this article of belief, and to which Weismann, Poulton, and apparently Ray Lankester belong, the Wallaceian school. Weismann has put forth a theory of inheritance, that of the continuity of the germ plasm, which makes this inheritance a physical impossibility. We believe that the Wallaceians have erred as far from the truth as the Lamarckians have, because, as we shall show hereafter, a great many of the organs and structures displayed by organisms cannot be explained on the natural selection hypothesis. Those who pin their faith to this, needlessly increase the difficulty of the problem which they have to face.
There remains the third school, to which we belong, and of which Bateson, De Vries, Kellog and T. H. Morgan appear to be adherents. This school steers a course between the Scylla of use-inheritance and the Charybdis of the all-sufficiency of natural selection. It may seem surprising to some that we should class De Vries as a Neo-Darwinian, seeing that he is the originator of the theory of evolution by means of mutations, which we shall discuss in Chapter III. of this work. As a matter of fact the theory of mutations should be regarded, not as opposed to the theory of Darwin, but as a theory engrafted upon it. De Vries himself writes:—“My work claims to be in full accord with the principles laid down by Darwin.” Similarly Hubrecht writes in the _Contemporary Review_ for November 1908: “Paradoxical as it may sound, I am willing to show that my colleague, Hugo de Vries, of Amsterdam, who a few years ago grafted his _Mutations Theorie_ on the thriving and very healthy plant of Darwinism, is a much more staunch Darwinian than either Dr Wallace himself, or the two great authorities in biological science whom he mentions, Sir William Thistleton Dyer and Professor Poulton.”