"But _a little consideration showed_" (italics mine) "that though Lamarck
had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of modification, it
is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly inadequate to account
for any considerable modification in animals, and which can have no
influence whatever in the vegetable world," &c.
I should be very glad to come across some of the "little consideration"
which will show this. I have searched for it far and wide, and have
never been able to find it.
I think Professor Huxley has been exercising some of his ineradicable
tendency to try to make things clear in the article on Evolution, already
so often quoted from. We find him (p. 750) pooh-poohing Lamarck, yet on
the next page he says, "How far 'natural selection' suffices for the
production of species remains to be seen." And this when "natural
selection" was already so nearly of age! Why, to those who know how to
read between a philosopher's lines the sentence comes to very nearly the
same as a declaration that the writer has no great opinion of "natural
selection." Professor Huxley continues, "Few can doubt that, if not the
whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation." A
philosopher's words should be weighed carefully, and when Professor
Huxley says, "few can doubt," we must remember that he may be including
himself among the few whom he considers to have the power of doubting on
this matter.
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