ABSTRACT
The theory of biological evolution or the transformation of species has always exercised a powerful attraction upon minds of the synthetic order. This chapter shows how the evolution theory, either alone or aided by the clash of Lamarckism and Darwinism, has played and continues to play a role of synthetization on a scale unrivalled hitherto by any other doctrine. The assertion that the struggle for existence is the sole factor in evolution must give great importance to those individual fortuitous variations which constitute the raw material on which selection is exercised. Research into these hereditary variations which depend on amphimixis receives a stimulus which, on the one hand leads to the discovery of the phenomenon of particulate inheritance and to the theoretical consequences. And on the other hand raises the question of the significance, or of the why and wherefore, of sexual reproduction.
