The evolution of sex
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| The evolution of sex |
the course of the preparation of critical summaries, such as_ the articles ‘‘ Reproduction’’ or ‘‘ Sex,’’ contributed by one of us to the ‘‘ Encyclopaedia Britannica,’’ or the account of recent progress annually prepared for the Zoological Record by the other, we have not only naturally accumulated considerable material toward a general theory of the subject but have come to take up an altered and unconventional view upon the general questions of biology, particularly upon that of the factors of organic evolution. Hence this little book has the difficult task of inviting the criticism of the biological student, although primarily addressing itself to the general reader or beginner.
The specialist, therefore, must not expect exhaustiveness, despite a good deal of small type and bibliography, over which other readers (for whose sakes technicalities have also been kept down as much as possible) may lightly skim.
Our central thesis has been, in the first place, to present an outline of the main processes for the continuance of organic life with such unity as our present knowledge renders possible; and in the second, to point the way toward the interpretation of these processes in those ultimate biological terms which physiologists are already reaching as regards the functions of individual life,— those of the constructive and destructive changes (anabolism and katabolism) of living matter or protoplasm.
But while Books I. and II. are thus the more important, and such chapters as ‘‘ Hermaphroditism,’’ ‘‘ Parthenogenesis,’’ ‘‘ Alternation of Generations,’’ have only a subordinate and comparatively technical interest, it will be seen that our theme raises nearly all the burning questions of biology. Hence, for instance, a running discussion and criticism of the speculative views of Professor Weismann, to which their very recent introduction to English readers has awakened so wide an interest.
At once of less technical difficulty, and in some respects even wider issues, is the discussion of Mr. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, reopened by the other leading contribution to the year’s biological literature which we owe to Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace.
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