( ex ) 



and strains ; and (as Lamarck bids us observe), in spite of all 

 the long-continued response to the earlier normal specific 

 conditions, the innate congenital potentiality shows itself. 

 The individual under the new quantities of environing agen- 

 cies shows new responsive quantities in those parts of its 

 structure concerned, new or acquired characters. 



" So far, so good. What Lamarck next asks us to accept, 

 as his ' second law,' seems not only to lack the support of 

 experimental proof, but to be inconsistent with what has just 

 preceded it. The new character, whicli is ex hypothesi, as was 

 the old character (length, breadth, weight of a part) which it 

 has replaced — a response to environment, a particular mould- 

 ing or manipulation by incident forces of the potential con- 

 genital quality of the I'ace — is, according to Lamarck, all of a 

 sudden raised to extraordinary powers. The new or freshly- 

 acquired character is declared by Lamarck and his adherents 

 to be capable of transmission by generation ; that is to say, it 

 alters the potential character of the species. It is no longer a 

 merely responsive or reactive character, determined quantita- 

 tively by quantitative conditions of the environment, but 

 becomes fixed and incorporated in the potential of the race, so 

 as to persist when other quantitative external conditions are 

 substituted for those which originally determined it. In 

 opposition to Lamarck, one must urge, in the first place, that 

 this thing has never been shown experimentally to occur ; and 

 in the second place, thei'e is no ground for holding its occur- 

 rence to be probable, but, on the contrary, strong reason for 

 holding it to be improbable. Since the old character (length, 

 breadth, weight) had not become fixed and congenital after 

 many thovisands of successive generations of individuals had 

 developed it in response to environment, but gave place to a 

 new character when new conditions operated on an individual 

 (Lamarck's first law), why should we suppose that the new 

 character is likely to become fixed after a much shorter time 

 of responsive existence, or to escape the operation of the first 

 law 1 Clearly there is no reason (so far Lamarck's statement 

 goes) for any such supposition, and the two so-called laws of 

 Lamarck are at variance with one another." 



These passages have been quoted at length because they 



