.tax. 1S99] BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY 47 



therefore adherence to the general characters of the type ; from the 

 second, the possibility, within certain limits, of departure or divergence 

 from the ancestral type. 



With regard to speech, we find likewise two main factors of develop- 

 ment : on the one hand, the speech of each individual is acquired from 

 and moulded by the commerce of his associates, whom we are to con- 

 sider as his linguistic parents as it were, while on the other hand, it is 

 modified by his independent personal peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. 



For speech, as for species, the former of these two factors, or groups 

 of factors, is by far the more important, and that because every modifica- 

 tion of the nature of the individual (speech or organism) which diverges 

 from the originally inherited tendency, determines the direction of varia- 

 tion for the succeeding generation. 



But we must not forget, says Professor Paul, that there are import- 

 ant differences between the conditions under which an animal on the 

 one hand, and a language on the other, is born. For whereas the direct 

 influence of the parents ceases for the animal from the moment of its 

 birth ; the speech-parents of an individual exert their influence from 

 his first infant babblings down to the latest moment of his life, although 

 in a varying degree. 



Again, whereas the animal or plant has but two, sometimes only 

 one parent, the speaking individual learns from hundreds of different 

 speakers, and has therefore an almost infinite number of " strains " 

 infused into his speech. This I believe to be an accurate statement of 

 Professor Paul's suggestive comparison. 



But if we examine it closely, and endeavour to use it as a starting- 

 point from which to think out the process of speech-development, the 

 analogy fails us at every turn, and appears, in fact, to lead us into one 

 blind alley after another. In the first place, it is surely a confusion of 

 terms to speak of an inherited character as a " factor " of development. 

 It is rather a fact of life. The factors which may modify the inherited 

 characters are left untouched and unnamed. If we were to say that 

 an organism inherits tendencies to change in a certain direction, we 

 might then, I conceive, talk of this inherited tendency as a " factor " in 

 evolution or development ; but Professor Paul seems to take for granted 

 that all inherited characters make for a conservation of type, so that 

 they are thus, strictly speaking, hot factors of development at all. In 

 passing, we may note that it is scarcely biologically conceivable that 

 characters acquired in the lifetime of the individual, mere modifications 

 of structure from the action of the environment, should form a starting- 



7 o 



point for permanent variations in the species, or, as Professor Paul puts 

 it, that " every modification of the nature of the individual which 

 diverges from the originally inherited tendency determines the direc- 

 tion of variation for the succeeding generation." But we need not 

 pause here to discuss the moot question of whether acquired characters 

 are inherited, but may pass on to criticise the justness of the rest of 



