[658] Op. cit., p. 464.
[659] Sec F. v. Wagner, Das Problem der Vererbung. Die Aula, 1895.
[660] The much-discussed question of telegony seems to me out of place in this connection, for if it actually exists at all it must be effected by some intricate modification in the germ substance itself, and does not concern the inheritance of somatogenic qualities.
[661] J. W. Spengel, Zweckmässigkeit und Anpassung, Giessener Rectoratsrede, 1898.
[662] G. R. Romanes, Darwin and after Darwin, vol. ii.
[663] Baldwin, Organic Selection. Amer. Naturalist, June, July, 1896, and Biolog. Centralblatt, vol. xvii (1897), p. 385. Weismann, Ueber Germinal Selection, Jena, 1896. (Also in English translation.)
[664] Baldwin calls this directing influence of organic selection orthoplasy; he attempts to replace Eimer’s “orthogenesis” by means of a principle which does not involve the inheritance of acquired characters. [A recent exposition of organic selection is by Conn (Method of Evolution, 1900). See also Baldwin’s Dict. of Philos. and Psychol., sub verbo.—Tr.]
[665] The process is, of course, reversed in degeneration.
[666] Weismann insists that individual selection must give the impetus to such specially directed evolution of the germ substance; but it seems to me that his theory can not escape the objection that it lacks proper grounds for selection unless the specially directed variations in the germ substance arise independently of individual selection. It may then be said that even in a quite constant species there are, as a result of germinal selection, dispositions to specially directed variations (the lower jaw of the Hapsburgs, for instance, or the appearance of a specialised genius in a talented family), which, so long as the environment remains constant, very soon meet the opposition of individual selection. But when outer conditions are changed, the useful variations arise again, encounter and finally overcome individual selection. Whether the struggle for existence really plays such a rôle in the germ substance, however, it is difficult to assert with assurance.
[667] Ibid.