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Dr. N. S. Shaler, department of geology, Harvard, says:
- It begins to be evident that the Darwinian hypothesis is still essentially unverified. * * * It is not yet proven that a single species of the two or three million now inhabiting the earth had been established solely or mainly by the operation of natural selection.
Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, has said:
- The Darwinian theory of descent has in the realms of nature not a single fact to confirm it. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination.
And John Burroughs, although an evolutionist up to his recent death, said of Darwin, in the August, 1920, Atlantic Monthly:
- He has already been as completely shorn of his selection doctrines as Samson was shorn of his locks.
If these statements from scientific men mean anything at all, they mean, at least, that pure Darwinism is altogether unproven, if not that it is dead.
(ii). The Doctrine of Acquired Characters.
Spencer made this doctrine the fundamental one in his evolutionary philosophy. Its importance was so vital to him that he said:
- Close contemplation of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with the two alternatives —either there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no evolution.
