THE INBORN POTENTIALITY OF THE CHILD 309 



egg-cell surrounding the germinal substance or nucleus provides 

 the material out of which fresh nuclear material is built until 

 division of the nucleus occurs (6); the cell then divides, 

 and the process is continually repeated. In the case of other 

 e gg S — e .g. that of the chicken, there is sufficient material to 

 build up the young chick ; in animals, however, the fertilised 

 egg-cell receives its nutrition after a short time from the blood 

 of the mother. 



The reason why I have endeavoured, in simple language, to 

 explain these facts to you is in order to make you better under- 

 stand the essential biological fact of reproduction and how it is 

 necessary to the perpetuation of the species ; also to explain the 

 differences between congenital disease and true hereditary 

 disease. As soon as the fertilised ovum, which is to form first 

 the embryo and then the child, is nourished by the blood of the 

 mother, it is liable to be affected by poisoned states of her blood. 

 The best example I can offer of this is syphilis affecting the 

 maternal blood, whereby the embryo is killed or the child is 

 born with congenital syphilis. But you may ask : Can the male 

 germs be in no way affected by the fact that the man had had 

 syphilis, or that he had been a chronic drunkard, or suffered 

 with chronic lead poisoning? This is a crucial point in the study 

 of heredity. " The neo-Lamarckian doctrine of the inheritance 

 of acquired characters is a question of great social importance. 

 It does not assert that a change produced in an individual by 

 functional activity or external conditions is inherited at once 

 and completely by that individual's offspring ; but what the 

 neo-Lamarckians mean is that when a certain functional activity 

 produces a certain change in one generation, it will produce it 

 more readily in the next and so on — until ultimately structural 

 modifications will appear in the young even before the function 

 which has produced them has commenced, and the process may 

 go on indefinitely until the structural character in question will 

 be inherited for many generations after the exercise of such a 

 function has altogether ceased." (Cunningham.) 



The majority of biologists deny the possibility of the trans- 

 mission of an acquired character, and I would agree up to a 

 certain point that there is no evidence or proof that an acquired 

 character can be transmitted. That a father who drinks heavily 

 and sees his wife and family starving transmits the desire to 

 drink in his offspring is illogical and unproven; but he may 



