[153] Quite recently Kammerer (Arch. Entw. Mech. 25, 1907, p. 7) has published very important experiments on the inheritance of “acquired” modifications with regard to the peculiarities of reproduction in Salamandra atra and S. maculosa. It seems rather improbable—though not absolutely impossible—that the germ cells were directly affected by the external modifying agent in this case.
[154] We have not spoken about the hypothetic inheritance of pure physiological adaptations, for it is clear without further discussion that innate specific immunity, for instance, being a specific “adaptedness” (see p. [186]) might be due to the inheritance of the results of active immunity as an adaptation, just as adaptive congenital structures might be due to such an inheritance.
[155] C. E. v. Baer clearly discriminated between the type, the degree of organisation, and the histological structure. All these three topics indeed have to be taken into account separately; the third alone is of the adaptive type. All of them may be independent of each other: the Amoeba may be as adapted histologically as is a high vertebrate, but it is of much lower type; and in its own type it is of a lower degree of organisation than Radiolaria are.
[156] I repeat once more that we are dealing here with dogmatic “Neo-”Lamarckism exclusively. This theory indeed claims to explain all features and properties of organic bodies on the basis of the feeling of needs and storing of contingent fulfilments and on this basis alone, just as dogmatic “Neo”-Darwinism claims to account for all those phenomena on the ground of contingent variations and natural selection. Darwin himself, as we have seen, intentionally left unexplained certain primary features of life and therefore cannot be blamed for having failed to explain them, though even then his theory remains wrong. Lamarck personally considered a real primary organisatory law of phylogeny as being of fundamental importance, and therefore he is not in the least responsible if “Neo-Lamarckism” fails as a universal theory.
[157] Compare also the excellent criticism of Lamarckism lately given by G. Wolff, Die Begründung der Abstammungslehre, München, 1907.
[158] It has also very often been said by Darwinians that Lamarckism is only able to explain those cases of adaptedness which relate to active functioning but not mere passive adapted characters, like “mimicry” for example. But this argument taken by itself, it seems to me, would not be fatal to Neo-Lamarckism in the special form August Pauly gave to this doctrine.
[159] But nothing more. All “mutations” hitherto observed in nature or (comp. page 238, note 3) experimentally produced relate only to “varieties” and not to “species.” One could hardly say that the recent investigations about the production of mutations by external means have strengthened their importance for the general theory of transformism.
[160] The word “possible” relating to originating, of course, not to surviving. It is here that natural selection may acquire its logical importance alluded to above (see page [264]).
[161] The discussions in the second volume of this book will show the possible significance of such an analysis. We at present are dealing with entelechy in a quasi-popular manner.