138 MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 



of characteristics which have the firmest hold upon the 

 race ; as illustrated by a polygonal block with unequal 

 sides : the chances are that the block will fall upon its 

 longest side, yet it may fall upon its shortest side and 

 represent a new type, which, nevertheless, possesses 

 some small stability of its own. Against such stability, 

 however, works the law of regression, viz. that upon the 

 whole the stature of children will be more mediocre than 

 that of their parents ; that the more exceptional an indi- 

 vidual is, the greater are the chances that his offspring 

 will be unlike him, i.e. nearer to the race type. Near- 

 ness of kinship must therefore be computed in degrees 

 of regression. 3. In the life history of the individual the 

 influences of nature, or inherited constitution, greatly 

 preponderate over those of nurture, or environment and 

 education. It has been generally held that the study 

 of man affords the most striking examples of the law 

 of inheritance of acquired characters. Yet Galton says, 

 in doubtful terms, that such inheritance should be looked 

 for not in the first but in the second and third genera- 

 tions ; that acquired faculties, if at all, are transmitted 

 with dilution ; that the actual evidence for such trans- 

 mission is not very conclusive. 



It appears to me that if Weismann's system had 

 been especially built up a posterioriiox Galton's anthro- 

 pological laws it could not have been better adjusted, 

 but since he makes no allusion to Galton's work we 

 know this was not the case. The balance between 

 variation and stability, the element of certainty and of 

 chance in the mingling of heritages, the reduction of 

 parental and ancestral characteristics are all explainable 

 by Weismann's views of physical transmission. Upon 



