Considerations of this sort induced not only Neo-Lamarckians, but many non-partisans as well, to take the field against the Darwinian Selection Principle. Thus Spencer’s caustic attack became a forerunner of others, and eminent biologists, like Fleischmann, Driesch, T. H. Morgan, and Bateson, have in turn poured the vials of their satire upon the attempts of Neo-Darwinians to rehabilitate the philosophy of natural selection. Wm. Bateson warns those, who persist in their credulity with reference to the Darwinian account of organic teleology, that they “will be wise henceforth to base this faith frankly on the impregnable rock of superstition and to abstain from direct appeals to natural fact.” This admonition forms the conclusion of a scathing criticism of what he styles the “fustian of Victorian philosophy.” “In the face of what we know,” it runs, “of the distribution of variability in nature, the scope claimed for natural selection must be greatly reduced. The doctrine of the survival of the fittest is undeniable so long as it is applied to the organism as a whole, but to attempt by this principle to find value in all definiteness of parts and functions, and in the name of science to see fitness everywhere, is mere eighteenth century optimism. Yet it was in its application to the parts, to the details of specific difference, to the spots on the peacock’s tail, to the coloring of an orchid flower, and hosts of such examples, that the potency of natural selection was urged with greatest emphasis. Shorn of these pretensions the doctrine of the survival of favored races is a truism, helping scarcely at all to account for the diversity of species. Tolerance plays almost as considerable a part. By these admissions the last shred of that teleological fustian with which Victorian philosophy loved to clothe the theory of evolution is destroyed.” (_Heredity_, “Presidential Address to Brit. Ass’n. for Advanc. of Science,” Aug. 14, 1914.) Nor is this all. The Darwinian Selection Principle is reproached with having retarded the progress of science. It is justly accused of having discouraged profound and painstaking analysis by putting into currency its shallow and spurious solution of biological problems. “Too often in the past,” says Edmund Wilson, “the facile formulas of natural selection have been made use of to carry us lightly over the surface of unsuspected depths that would have richly repaid serious exploration.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 406.)