On germinal selection as a source of definite variation / by August Weismann ; translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack.

  • Weismann, August, 1834-1914.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: On germinal selection as a source of definite variation / by August Weismann ; translated from the German by Thomas J. McCormack. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/104 (page 11)
    GERMINAL SELECTION. Numerous and varied are the objections that have been advanced against the theory of selection since it was first enunciated by Darwin and Wallace—from the unreasoning strictures of Richard Owen and the acute and thoughtful criticisms of Albert Wigand and Nägeli to the opposition of our own day, which con¬ tends that selection cannot create but only reject, and which fails to see that precisely through this rejection its creative efficacy is asserted. The champions of this view are for discovering the motive forces of evolution in the laws that govern organisms—as if the norm according to which an event happens were the event itself, as if the rails which determine the direction of a train could supplant the locomotive. Of course, from every form of life there proceeds only a definite, though extremely large, number of tracks, the possi¬ ble variations, whilst between them lie stretches with¬ out tracks, the impossible variations, on which locomo¬ tion is impossible. But the actual travelling of a track is not performed by the track, but by the locomotive, and on the other hand, the choice of a track, the decision whether the destination of the train shall be Berlin or Paris, is not made by the locomotive, the cause of the variation, but by the driver of the loco¬ motive, who directs the engine on the right track. In the theory of selection the engine-driver is repre¬ sented by utility, for with utility rests the decision 11