ACQUIRED CHARACTERS. 37 



in the offspring. This is to a certain extent true. We 

 do not find that the man who has lost his right hand 

 begets children with imperfect hands, nor do we 

 expect to find it. If the injury or mutilation be to 

 some exquisitely sensitive organ, as the brain, we may 

 have it repeated in the offspring, as we do at times 

 find epilepsy acquired by the parent reproduced in 

 the children ; but in the great majority of such injuries 

 the step is too great a one for Nature, who does nothing 

 by leaps and bounds. From the perfect hand, the work 

 of ten thousand generations, to the imperfect hand 

 bearing two or three fingers is too radical a change ; 

 but let the change be sufficiently gradual, and assuredly 

 we shall have the transmitted type changed. See 

 what changes can be brought about in this same 

 member, the hand, within a few generations. Look at 

 the narrow, elegant, small-boned hand of which the 

 aristocratic family, whose members have not been 

 engaged in manual labour for generations, is so proud : 

 compare it with the broad-palmed, large- boned, knotty- 

 fingered hand of the navvy, the " horny-handed son of 

 toil," and tell us whether these hands were born alike. 

 And just as the hand can be modified, so can any other 

 limb or organ, so can the mind, so can the moral 

 nature. 



I might give many examples of the transmission 

 of acquired physical characters, but I shall only men- 

 tion two which are in themselves most interesting. 

 The first is the process of degeneration which is going 

 on among civilised peoples in the little toe. Herr 



