346 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Eiineiy* Geddes and Thompson, f Brown-Sequard, j and Giard,§ as 

 well as Henslow, Lloyd Morgan, and others. 



Eimer's work is entirely based on the view that the inheritance of 

 acquired characters is a fundamental law of organic growth, though he 

 allows " that the permanent action of external conditions on the body 

 of the organism in most cases is not immediately perceptible. From 

 physiological principles this is not in general possible." He thinks 

 that more time than even Darwin supposed to be necessary must be 

 invoked. He adds : " Every character which must have been formed 

 through the activity of the organism is an acquired character. All 

 characters, therefore, which have been developed by exertion, are ac- 

 quired, and these characters are inherited from generation to genera- 

 tion. The same holds for all organs atrophied through disuse ; the 

 degree of atrophy is acquired and inherited. In the first class we see 

 especially the action of direct adaptation, in the second the results of 

 the cessation of this action. A third class of acquired characters are 

 to be traced simply to the immediate action of the environment on the 

 organism, and originally, at the commencement of their appearance, 

 all characters must have belonged to this class." (p. 87.) 



At present it seems the better course, now that the hypothesis has 

 been so fully discussed, to wait for more facts, and to very thoroughly 

 test the cases which seem to favor or to oppose the doctrine. 



Some of the discussions held on this subject have savored of the 

 metaphysics of the Middle Ages, and quite artificial distinctions, with 

 the invoking of " natural selection " by authors whose natural selec- 

 tion is quite a different doctrine from the natural selection of Darwin ; 

 and other occult causes have been given undue prominence. 



Meanwhile we feel justified from the facts now known in holding 

 the view that characters acquired in the lifetime of the individual, as 

 the result of functional activity in certain regions of the body or in 

 certain organs, may under favorable conditions be more or less cora- 



* Organic Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters, 

 etc. Translated by J. T. Cunningham. London, 1890. 



t Evolution of Sex, 1890. See also Dr. O. von Rath's Criticisms of some 

 Cases of Apparent Transmission of Mutilations. Translated by Prof. H. B. 

 Ward, Amer. Naturalist, with the bibliography at the end of the article, Jan- 

 uary, 1894. 



| Faits nouveaux e'tablissant l'extreme Fre'quence de la Transmission par 

 Here'dite d'Etats organiques morbides, produits accidentellement chez des 

 Ascendants. (Comptes Rendus de l'Acade'mie des Sciences, 13 Mars, 1882.) 



§ L' Here'dite des Modifications somatiques. Revue Scientifique, Tom. XL VI. 

 No. 23, 6 Dec, 1890. 



