ABSTRACT
Darwin’s view of the process of evolution, combining his own theory of natural selection with Lamarck’s theory of the transmission of acquired modifications, was for a time generally accepted by the scientific world. The neo-Darwinians said that the law has always forbidden and made quite impossible any transmission of an estate in the changed form given it by the landlord. The dispute between the neo-Darwinians and the Lamarckians, which has so fiercely raged and still rages, is then a dispute concerning the fundamental laws of inheritance. The critics of neo-Darwinism continue to assert the inadequacy of natural selection and the consequent need of some other principle such as that of Lamarck. The neo-Darwinians have been forced to concede that the principle of fortuitous variation is not a sufficient basis for the theory of evolution by natural selection alone; but they have continued to deny the possibility of any transmission of modifications.
