Literary Notices. Ixv 



proof; and therefore it is as idle in Darwinists to challange Weismann 

 for proof of his negative (i. e. that acquired characters are not trans- 

 mitted), as it is in Weismann to challange Darwinists for proof of the 

 opposite negative (i. e. that all seeming cases of such transmission are 

 not due to natural selection). This dead-lock arises from the fact that 

 in nature it is beyond the power of the followers of Darwin to exclude 

 the abstract possibility of Lamarckian principles. Therefore at pres- 

 ent the question must remain for the most part a matter of opinion, 

 based upon general reasoning as distinguished from special or crucial 

 experiments. The evidence available on either side is presumptive, 

 not demonstrative." 



Mr. Romanes next proceeds to summarize the evidence, indirect, 

 direct, and experimental, on both sides of the question. Under the cap- 

 tion of Indirect Evidences in Favor of Transmission, the most important 

 section is that concerned with reflex action and instinct. As this evi- 

 dence is new, it may be worth while to examine Mr. Romanes' argument 

 at some length. " It belongs to the very nature of reflex action," he 

 maintains, " that it cannot work unless all parts of the machinery con- 

 cerned are already present, and already coordinated, in the same or- 

 ganism." It follows, of course, that the coordinated mechanism which 

 thus constitues a physiological unit cannot have been developed by in- 

 sensible gradations under the law of natural selection. The reflexes 

 must, then, have originated as conscious acts which have been pre- 

 served and transmitted under Lamarckian principles ; i. e. reflexes, hke 

 many instincts, are lapsed intelligence. The argument is presented 

 under three heads, (i) The simplest piece of reflex machinery can- 

 not have occurred — as a result of congenital variations alone — in any 

 considerable number of individuals of a species when it first began to be 

 constructed ; if it should chance to occur it would be swamped by inter- 

 crossing. (2) Reflex actions, from their very nature, cannot admit of any 

 very great differences in degree of adaptation ; the working efficiency 

 must be perfect from the start. (3) Even when reflex mechanisms have 

 been fully formed, it is often beyond the power of sober credence to be- 

 lieve that they now are, or ever can have been, of selective value in the 

 struggle for existence. 



Now, it seems to me that the first two of these points lose all of 

 their weight and the third much of its weight from a few very simple 

 considerations. There is a theory of the origin of reflexes which is 

 held by a not inconsiderable number of biologists which Mr. Romanes 

 seems not to have taken into account. Going back to the most primi- 

 tive properties of organized matter, we find promment among these the 



