Note 26 — Chapter II · REVIEW OF THE POSITION
Reading edition
Romanes, Examination of Weismannism, p. 115.
“It is doubtful if anything better as to Weismann’s theory of heredity can be said to-day than Romanes said in 1893, and inasmuch as these two latter or distinctive postulates are not needed for Weismann’s theory of heredity, while they are both essential to his theory of evolution, I cannot but regret that he should have thus crippled the former by burdening it with the latter. Hence my object throughout has been to display, as sharply as possible, the contrast that is presented between the brass (“iron” preferably) and the clay in the colossal figure which Weismann has constructed. Hence also my emphatic dissent from his theory of evolution does not prevent me from sincerely appreciating the great value which attaches to his theory of heredity. And although I have not hesitated to say that this theory is, in my opinion, incomplete; that it presents not a few manifest inconsistencies, and even logical contradictions; that the facts on which it is founded have always been facts of general knowledge; that in all its main features it was present to the mind of Darwin, and distinctly formulated by Galton; that in so far as it has been constituted the basis of a more general theory of organic evolution it has proved a failure; such considerations in no way diminish my cordial recognition of the services which its distinguished author has rendered to science by his speculations upon these topics. For not only has he been successful in drawing renewed and much more general attention to the important questions touching the transmissibility of acquired characters, the causes of variation, and so on; but even those parts of his system which have proved untenable are not without such value as temporary scaffoldings present in relation to permanent buildings. Therefore, if I have appeared to play the role of a hostile critic, this has been only an expression of my desire to separate what seems to me the grain of good science from the chaff of bad speculation.”