NATURE AND NURTURE 55 



The origin of those useful properties in the employment of 

 which life consists is one of the most fascinating and instructive 

 subjects in the whole range of human inquiry, for to it knowledge 

 itself owes its significance. 



While there is so much that we do not know, we do know 

 that the qualities which fit the dog for his place in nature, and 

 enable him to respond to the changes which go on in the world 

 around him, are, in part, transmitted from his ancestors, while they 

 are, in part, the result of his individual training and experience 

 and education and contact with the world. 



The opinion that the effects of his individual history may be 

 transmitted to his descendants, the belief that he may inherit the 

 effects of the experience and education and training of his an- 

 cestors, has come to be formulated as " the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters"; although I, for my own part, never use this 

 form of words without protest. If any assert that the dog in- 

 herits anything which his ancestors did not acquire, their words 

 seem meaningless ; for, as we use words, everything which has 

 not existed from the beginning must have been acquired ; although 

 one may admit this without admitting that the nature of a dog 

 is, wholly or to any practical degree, the inherited effect of the 

 environment of his ancestors. 



Francis Galton, borrowing, I suppose, from "The Tempest," 

 many years ago contrasted the nature and the nurture of living 

 things ; and I propose to examine the question whether the nature 

 of a dog or of any other living being is inherited nurture. 



This is very different from the question whether the effects of 

 nurture are ever inherited, and I have no desire or intention to 

 discuss this interminable subject; for I find as little value in the 

 a priori arguments of those who hold that " acquired characters " 

 cannot be inherited as I find in Haeckel's assertion that "belief 

 in the inheritance of acquired characters is a necessary axiom of 

 the Monistic creed." 



So far as the question is whether the nature of organisms is 

 wholly or to any practical degree inherited nurture, I think it no 

 more than right to say that my own view of the matter was 

 formed many years ago, before the recent revival of discussion, 

 and that, while I have followed this, I have found no reason for 



