196 TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



until they are examined critically. The late Duke of Argyll, 

 in one of his scientific excursuses, said the world was strewn with 

 illustrations of the inheritance of acquired characters, and Dr. 

 W. Haacke, a very wide-awake evolutionist, has compared the 

 evidences for the affirmative to the sand on the sea-shore for 

 multitude, yet neither furnishes us, so far as we are aware, with 

 a single case that will bear analysis. The affirmative may be an 

 obvious interpretation of the results of evolution, but the ob- 

 vious interpretation is seldom the right one. The sun does not 

 go round the earth. 



(2) The affirmative is an interpretation which seems to make 

 the theory of organic evolution simpler ; it suggests a more 

 direct and rapid method than the natural selection of germinal 

 variations. If to a growing and varying nature or germinal 

 inheritance there were continually being added the results of 

 peculiarities in nurture, the rate of evolution would be 

 quickened, both upwards and downwards. But our first 

 business is to find out whether the hypothesis actually 

 consists with experience. 



(3) We are so accustomed in human affairs to the entailment 

 of acquired gains from generation to generation, to standing on 

 the shoulders of our ancestors' achievements, that many find 

 it difficult to refrain from projecting this on organic nature. 

 They forget that the greater part of our entailing process 

 comes about through our social heritage, which is altogether 

 apart from our natural inheritance. 



(4) A fourth reason is that many fictitious or anecdotal cases 

 of the inheritance of acquired characters continue circulating. 

 The inheritance of a letter branded upon the arm, which Aristotle 

 notes, is still in the popular currency, though it is perhaps an 

 extreme type of what His calls a handful of anecdotes. It is 

 reported that Sioux Indians tattoo discs on the cheekbone 

 prominences of their squaws, and it is said that similar marks 

 may be seen on some new-born children {Nature, iii., 1870 



