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and the phenomena of nature come to be looked at simply
from the point of view which the theory has taken up.
“ It is to be regretted that at the present time so many naturalists
accept the theory of Natural Selection as an exclusive explanation of
the evolution of existing species. They unconsciously blind them
selves to the existence of any other agent in the work of evolution.
To them there can be, nor is, no other. No greater error could be
made ; and it is my firm conviction that, as time goes on, the theory
of Natural Selection will gradually lose much of its present pre
sumed universality. What is becoming more evident every day
is that existing species do not owe near so much to Natural Selection
for their evolution as extreme Darwinians would have us believe.”—
(Charles Dixon. Nature, vol. xxxiii., p. 128.)
But if the proofs for the fact of Organic Evolution are
valid, and if Natural Selection has no place in nature,
we are bound to believe in the existence of other laws
and conditions by which it has been brought about.
And this belief is justified by the facts of the case.
In the first place, there is a selection in nature, even
if there is no Natural Selection. Similar variants, which
arise in connection with the variations necessarily asso
ciated with sexual reproduction, may be isolated for
breeding purposes by other agencies than that of life
and death. Such similar variants may separate them
selves from the other members of a species, and breed
with one another; and, in point of fact, they actually
do this. Similar variants may only be fertile inter se,
or their period of sexual maturity may differ from that
of the rest of the race; and this also we find to be
actually the case.
The effect of changed conditions and habits, by virtue
of which similar causes produce similar results on all the
members of a species subjected to their influence, whether
it act upon sexual elements or upon “ the body ” of a
group of individuals, will be to produce a transmutation of
