“That a spirit of earnestness would once more enter into biological investigation, which would no longer attempt to find in nature just what it wanted to find, but would be ready to follow truth at all costs, and to approach the riddle of life with an open mind.”
His “Beiträge zur Kritik der Darwinischen Lehre,” which appeared first as papers in the “Biologisches Centralblatt,” did not see the light in book form until 1898. The doctrine of selection was regarded as so unassailable that no publisher would take the risk of the book. Its appearance is a sure indication of the general modification of opinions that had taken place in the interval. The first and second essays are merely critical objections to the theory of selection, very similar to those frequently urged before, but more precisely stated.(52) The third is intended to show that there is in the forms of life themselves, as a faculty of adaptation peculiar to them, a primary purposiveness, which is unquestionably active throughout the lifetime and development of every individual, but which is also the deepest cause of “phylogenesis,” or the formation of a race. This doctrine makes both the Darwinian and Lamarckian theories merely secondary. For the phenomena which suggest the Lamarckian interpretation presuppose this most essential factor—the primary adaptiveness. Wolff concludes with a very striking instance—discovered by himself—of this primary adaptiveness of the organism—the regeneration of the lens in the newt’s eye.
More comprehensively, but from a precisely similar standpoint, Driesch has followed up the discussion of this problem.(53) He is, of all modern investigators, perhaps the one who has most persistently and thoroughly worked out the problem of causal and teleological interpretation, and he has also thrown much light on the scientific and epistemological aspects of the problem. That he could, in a recent volume of the “Biologisches Zentralblatt,” write a respectful and sympathetic exposition of the Hegelian nature-philosophy—as regards its aims, though not its methods—is as remarkable a symptom as we can instance of the modern trend of views and opinions.(54)
Contrast Between Darwinian and Post-Darwinian Views.