Why on earth Mr. Wells challenged me to give names opposed to the old Darwinian position I cannot conceive. It was a tactical blunder, so enormous that I can make nothing of it, save on the supposition that he, being a sincere man, does honestly believe no modern destructive criticism of Natural Selection—let alone of Transformism—to be in existence.
So much for my pose of great learning. I pose to about as much learning in the matter as anyone among thousands of my own sort who by current reading keep abreast of the mere elements of modern thought.
Now let us turn to the main point.
So there has been no destructive criticism of the old Darwinian hypothesis? So there are no names to be quoted against the particular distinctively Darwinian invention of Natural Selection? Indeed!
Let us see.
There is a certain Professor Bateson, who has left on record the following judgment:—
“We” (biologists in general) “have come to the conviction that the principle of Natural Selection cannot have been the chief factor in determining species....”
And who is this Professor Bateson, Mr. Wells will ask (perhaps with some contempt)?
Well, he was the President of the British Association when it met in Melbourne in 1914, and the sentence I have just quoted dates from that year.
Now let us turn to something totally different. I give it, not in German, which I cannot read, but in what I believe to be an adequate translation:—