A rejoinder to Professor Weismann / by Herbert Spencer.

  • Herbert Spencer
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A rejoinder to Professor Weismann / by Herbert Spencer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    A REJOINDER TO PROFESSOR WEISMANN. Irj . ^ As a species of literature, conti’oversy is characterised by a terrible fertility. Each proposition becomes the parent of half a dozen; so that a few replies and rejoinders produce an unmanageable population of issues, old and new, which end in being a nuisance to everybody. Remembering this, I shall refrain from dealing with all the points of Professor Weismann’s answer. I must limit myself to a part; and that there may be no suspicion of a selection convenient to myself, I will take those contained in his first article. Before dealing with his special arguments, let me say something about the general mode of argument which Pro- fessor Weismann adopts. The title of his article is “ The All-Sufficiency of Natural Selection.”* Very soon, however, as on p. 322, we come to the admission, which he has himself italicised, “ that it is really very difficult to imagine this process of natural selection in its details; and to this day it is impossible to demonstrate it in any one point.” Elsewhere, as on pp. 327 and 336 a propos of other cases, there are like admissions. But now if the sufficiency of an assigned cause cannot in any case be * Contemporary Review, September 1893. A
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