62 THE RISE OF MAN. 



in which the single organs are split up into innumerable 

 individuals and there can be no question that the wonib 

 (i. e. the queen) of the collective creature lives physio- 

 logically in absolute separation from the rest and no direct 

 transmission of acquired characteristics of the workers is 

 possible. According to Weismann, therefore, the process 

 of evolution is due to a selection of germs containing 

 characteristics better adapted to conditions, and the rise of 

 a difference in these germs is not due to any use and dis- 

 use of organs, or whatever the workers may do or leave 

 undone. 



Weismann 's critics pointed out that in human society 

 the children of scholars would show a greater refinement 

 than the children of their brothers who had lived as farm- 

 ers, that the latter showed more bony structures than the 

 former, and so indicated that use and disuse affected the 

 system, and that these characteristics became hereditary ; 

 but Weismann explains such instances by a predisposition 

 contained already in the germ. He would say that the 

 predisposition to become a scholar or a farmer was already 

 contained in the germs, and had determined the occupation 

 of the several numbers of one and the same family, and 

 though this would seem strange at first sight, it can not 

 be disproved. 



It is a well known fact that the little toe of man is 

 undergoing at present a constant degeneration, commonly 

 attributed to the use of shoes, but Weismann proves that 

 this degeneration can not be due to the pressure of shoes 

 because it takes place in perfect independence of the use 

 of foot-wear. The degeneration of the little toe is trace- 

 able also among savages who never in their lives had a 

 shoe on their foot, and also in the bodies of the most an- 

 cient mummies, who lived before the invention of our 

 modern boots. The reason of this degeneration accordingly 

 is not the actual use and disuse of the little toe, but be- 

 cause the use of the toe is not needed, and so the individ- 



