Page:The Last link.djvu/87

Rh deeply than Herbert Spencer. He is one of those older thinkers who before Darwin were convinced that the theory of development is the only way to solve the 'enigma of the world.' Spencer is also the champion of those evolutionists who lay the greatest weight upon progressive heredity, or the much combated heredity of acquired characters. From the first he has severely attacked and criticised the theories of Weismann, who denies this most important factor of phylogeny, and would explain the whole of transformism by the 'all-sufficiency of selection.' In England the theories of Weismann were received with enthusiastic acclamation, much more so than on the Continent, and they were called 'Neo-Darwinism,' in opposition to the older conception of Evolution, or 'Neo-Lamarckism.' Neither of those expressions is correct. Darwin himself was convinced of the fundamental importance of progressive heredity