February, 1928 



EVOLUTION 



Page Seven 



parts of the cell mechanism, sometimes visible under the micro- 

 scope, called '"genes." In the early days of research men talked 

 with easy assurance of how every character was formed by a 

 certain gene or part of a gene. But lately it has been found 

 that the process of embryo-building is by no means so simple: 

 we now know that even a slight character may be shaped by the 

 interaction of dozens of genes, perhaps of hundreds. Much of 

 the theorizing about inheritance is now seen to be erroneous. 

 So H. S. Jennings of Joluis Hopkins was moved to write a little 

 book, "Prometheus," in which he spoke strongly of the miscon- 

 ceptions. He is one of the most careful men in his profession. 

 The characteristics of the adult are no more present in 

 the germ-celis than are those of an automobile in the metal- 

 lic ores out of wliich it is ultimately manufactured. . . 

 The characteristics that appear under training are as much 

 inherited characters as are those appearing under other 

 conditions. 



If a college debater quoted those sentences out of context, liis 

 audience would suppose that Jennings is disputing the whole 

 world of biologists. But actually he is doing nothing of the sort. 

 He is engaged in an abstruse argument about the way biologists 

 use certain terms, and he has gone so far in stressing a point 

 for experts that he misleads a non-technical reader. He himself 

 foresaw that he would be misunderstood and tried to avoid the 

 danger by saying in a footnote: 



Nothing in the text relates to the effect of education on 

 the descendants of the educated person. 

 And that effect is all that concerns us in this arlicle. The 

 quotations from Jennings are typical of how a line of sound 

 reasoning may be perverted, and so deceive us, when a bit of it 

 is cited in another line of reasoning. 



3. A very influential writer on heredity is Raymond Pearl, also 

 of Johns Hopkins. He contributed to the Mercury for November, 

 1927, a slashing article about the fallacies that are making 

 eugenics absurd. It was a wholesome article that will do a lot of 

 good. At one point he remarked fiercely: 



Heredity does not mean that like produces like. 

 If any competent biologist reads the whole arlicle and gets 

 Pearl's drift, he might not object to the extreme statement. But 

 if it were used, out of context, by a debater, it would appear to 

 say that the children of lunatics are just as likely to have good 

 minds as the children of sensible and intellectual people. 



Be wary when you hear any such extravagant statement which 

 seems to bowl over the foundation facts of heredity. One ad- 

 mirer of both Pearl and Jennings has said of their popular 

 essays, "These are insidious because they mislead the general 

 reader." The foundation facts of heredity are not altered everj' 

 time a cytologist tries to true up the tricky uses of technical 

 terms. The facts still stand as the basis of biology after all the 

 assaults of the last thirty years. They were admirably summed 

 up by G. Kingsley Noble, a curator of the American Museum, 

 the man who exposed the fraud in Kammerer's experiments. He 

 wrote for Natural History: 



Heredity gives an animal more potential characters than 

 can ever develop. Environment determines which of these 

 shall appear, but it cannot produce characters which are not 

 provided for by heredity. The actual inheritance of an 

 animal is thus ultimately dependent on the original com- 

 plement of genes. . . . All inheritable adaptations 

 have arisen independent of the environment. 

 There is not yet any proof that the human animal can produce 

 characters which are not provided for by heredity. He cannot, 

 by any sort of education, create new genes in his sperms or eggs. 

 A child cannot inherit any training — good or bad — of a parent's 

 body or mind. It can inherit only what is provided in germ-cells. 

 Does the judgment of science seem pessimistic to you? It is 

 just the contrary. As for environment, its importance is not 

 diminished; an improved environment can be a blessing to each 

 succeeding generation without being put into germ-cells. And as 

 for not inheriting good training, think of the other side of the 

 matter. Think of how children are safeguarded by not being 

 able to inherit the bad training. If we sentimental human beings 

 could change the process of inheritance, and if we made the 

 follies of parents inheritable, the human race would soon die. 



Life, Love and Civilization 



By George A. Dorsey 



EX came into life about fifty million years ago. It 

 brought Love and led to the peacock and civilization. 

 Life is older than sex. The love to live is the older 

 passion — so strong that man invented religions to rob 

 death of its sting and the grave of its victory. But 

 man's love for woman is a passion second only, if at all, 

 lo that of man's love for life. 



This must be so. Sex is nature's device to make life 

 richer, more economical, more enduring, and less the 

 sport of chance. Having built sex into bodies and hav- 

 ing charged sex with carrying on, nature has to see to 

 il that sex does its work. From nature's point of view, 

 mating is as important as living — not to mate is death 

 (0 the stream of life. As long as the stream renews it- 

 self, life flows on; without renewal, the stream runs dry. 



Or, look at it this way. Lowest organisms carry on 

 iiy mere division — one body becomes two, two become 

 four. One bacterium in a few hours produces billions, 

 each potentially immortal. But mere division limits 

 diversity — tlie "offspring" are all alike; there is little 

 thance for heredity to work improvements, and the whole 

 body has to stop its work to become two. Sex is the 

 device to get around these limitations. It worked won- 

 ders — it opened up new worlds of life; but it had to 

 work, for the burden of handing life on was taken 

 from division and put on multiplication. Sex had be- 

 come the bearer of immortal life on earth. 



Whereas nature once said: Eat and divide; she now 

 said: Eat, drink, and be married! 



Rape is no more a crime in nature's eyes than steal- 

 ing a loaf of bread; both spring from primordial hun- 

 ger. Fortunately, rape is rarely necessary. Civiliza- 

 tion cannot choke the life out of nature — nor breed a 

 lace of celibates or of vestal virgins. 



Nature did not stint the endowment of either sex. 

 The lion may have more mane and a louder roar, but 

 when it comes to a journey for a mate the lioness is 

 ihe faster traveler. The female rat will brave a danger 

 lo find a mate that only starvation pangs could make 

 her face — and she will face it sooner than the male. 



Lions and rats are uncivilized. So are we all at birth. 

 We cannot walk, we cannot talk — and left to ourselves 

 would perish. Our hands can support our body, but 

 our legs can not; our backbone is as yet fit only for a 

 wriggle. Our body grows human; we learn to act like 

 liumans. Meanwhile, who nourishes us? Who bore us? 



The male bird wears the fine feathers. In civilization 

 he provides them — and wears them vicariously. This 

 requires energy and strategy. 



Civilization is, of course, more than all this. It is 

 the accumulated deeds done to make life secure and the 

 prayers uttered to make life everlasting. It is also the 

 heaped-up spoils man has laid at the feet of woman and 

 hung on the walls of his home. 



Though life is older than love, they pooled their 

 forces eons ago and have been partners ever since. 

 They are as potent today as ever — they make up man's 

 inheritance, they furni-sh the drive to civilization. 



