lora has not been
evolved by a laborious process of selection lasting for many thousand
years; the organism may quickly and immediately produce the new characters
by its own reaction. Crustaceans gradually transferred from a salt-water
to a fresh-water habitat, or conversely, produce in a few generations the
type of a new "species" with correlated variations (Schmankewitsch). Birds
weaned by careful experiment from a diet of seeds to one of flesh, or
conversely, produce changes of effective correlation and adaptation in the
characters of their alimentary system. Plants that have been deprived of
their normal organs for absorbing water and prevented from growing new
ones produce entirely new and effective "hydatodes."(50)

It is instructive to notice that Darwinism seems likely to be robbed of
its stock illustration, namely, "protective coloration." By its own
internal power of reaction, and sometimes within one generation, and even
in the lifetime of an individual, an organism may assume the colour of the
substratum beneath it (soles, grasshoppers), of its surroundings (Eimer's
tree frogs), the colour and spottiness of the granite rock on which it
hangs, the colour of the leaves and twigs among which it lives (Poulton's
butterfly pupae), and even that of the brightly coloured sheets of paper
amidst which it is kept imprisoned. Certain spiders assume a white, pink,
or greenish "protective coloration" corresponding to the tinted blossom of
the plants which they frequent, and so on.(51) Eimer alleged that direct
psychical factors co-operated in bringing about these changes. In any
case, all this carries us far beyond the domain of mere naturalistic
factors into the mystery of life itself. Even what is called the
"influence of the external world," and the "active acquirement of new
characters," have their basis and the reason of their possibility in this
domain. And the whole domain is saturated through and through with
"teleology."

A recognition of the impressive secret of the organism led Gustav Wolff to
become a very pronounced critic of Darwinism, especially in the form of
Weismannism. As far back as 1896, in a lecture "On the present position of
Darwinism," in which he dealt only with Weismann, he criticised and
analysed that author's last attempt to uphold Darwinism by the
construction of his theory of "germinal selection." He concluded with the
wish:

"That a spirit of earnestness would once more enter into biolog