If Weismann really thought that
cats act thus without any consciousness or any purpose, immediate or
ulterior, he must have known very little about cats. But a thoroughgoing
Weismannite, if any such still survive from those mad days, would
contend that I am not at present necessarily conscious of what I am
doing; that my writing of these lines, and your reading of them, are
effects of Circumstantial Selection; that I heed know no more about
Darwinism than a butterfly knows of a lizard's appetite; and that the
proof that I actually am doing it unconsciously is that as I have spent
forty years in writing in this fashion without, as far as I can see,
producing any visible effect on public opinion, I must be incapable of
learning from experience, and am therefore a mere automaton. And
the Weismannite demonstration of this would of course be an equally
unconscious effect of Circumstantial Selection.
DARWINISM NOT FINALLY REFUTABLE
Do not too hastily say that this is inconceivable. To Circumstantial
Selection all mechanical and chemical reactions are possible, provided
you accept the geologists' estimates of the great age of the earth, and
therefore allow time enough for the circumstances to operate.
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