BIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 



if not absurd. To maintain that what we ac- 

 quire during life has no effect upon our de- 

 scendants seems to be flying into the face of 

 observed fact and, if true, to remove one of 

 the main springs that activate social progress. 

 That the right or wrong course of the par- 

 ent's life flows on more or less through that 

 of the child is one of the fundamental beliefs 

 of human nature and has long been held out 

 by moralists as an incentive to upright living. 

 This doctrine, however, seems to be in direct 

 opposition to the attitude of most modern 

 biologists toward the question of the inherit- 

 ance of acquired characters. But the contrast 

 thus set up, when carefully scrutinized, is found 

 to be not a contrast, after all, but rather a 

 confusion due to the complexities of human 

 inheritance. 



The transmission of traits from parent to 

 offspring, as we see it exhibited in guinea-pigs 

 and other organisms, is so like the transmis- 

 sion of property from parent to child in every- 

 day life that we call both by the same name, 

 inheritance. But we must never forget that 



o 



the inheritance of property is the original 

 process and that the other is but a figure of 

 speech. That there are fundamental differ- 



