These three are the only errors of any importance that I acknowledge
at once. A certain number of minor points are questioned in the
Review, and the theoretical portion is strongly criticised. It would
be irrelevant to the main purpose of a book which is limited to the
subject of Habit and Hair Direction in Animals to introduce some of
the more debateable branches of the subject of the former book, such
as tufts, the direction of the hair on the mole, the classification of
the hair-streams of the mammalian body into primitive, those modified
by morphological change, and those due to use and habit. This last is a
very wide subject and is far beyond the present limits.
I freely make another acknowledgment. The whole of the subject of the
Direction of Hair in Animals and Man was taken up _ad hoc_, that is to
say, for the purpose of testing the unpopular doctrine of Lamarckism.
If this be an offence against the highest spirit of science, I can but
accept the charge with a sigh, and go on, “faint yet pursuing.” There
is consolation in finding that increased study of a subject is bringing
order out of chaos, even if the field be small and the immediate crop
poor.
The following are some of the objections raised to the theoretical part
of the book:--
The most serious charge against my interpretation of the mode of
formation of patterns (whorls and tufts) is that there is a lack of
harmony between my preliminary statement that whorls are due to motor
or muscular causes and a subsequent explanation of some of them as
due to external pressure. I did not state then as clearly as I do now
in many passages in the present chapters that for pattern production
there may be at least four causes: _friction_, _pressure_, _gravity_,
_underlying muscular traction_, and that whorls and featherings may,
of course, arise from some other external force acting on the hair
at the decisive point of struggle, just as well as from the more
common cause--muscular traction on the skin. I think in this region
of the Review and where she deals with Selection, she shows signs of
that scientific monism which is still affecting many of our great
biologists, that is to say, they desire a world-empire in evolution
for the great factor of Selection, and will stretch their arguments
considerably to save its face. This is shown in the Review on page 406
where a very thin plea is put in on behalf of adaptation and Selection
in regard to hair-directions, as in man’s minute hairs, which cannot be
seriously maintained. That earth is stopped!
Darwin’s open-minded dualism in this matter of the factors of evolution
appeals to me at any rate more than the jealous attitude of Weismann
and his eminent adherents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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