CHAPTER VI 



THE INHERITANCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



IN turning our attention to the question whether acquired 

 characters are inherited, we are coming to a most important 

 and at the same time hotly debated problem of Heredity. 

 It is, indeed, the foremost issue in the whole subject of 

 Heredity, inasmuch as practical consequences of the most 

 far-reaching extent flow from the answer we give to this 

 question. The whole future of our race, its improvement 

 and betterment, is vitally affected by our decision, whether 

 we affirm or deny the possibility of the inheritance of 

 acquired characters. And it is for this very reason that 

 the point has been so assiduously and so hotly discussed 

 by the leading scientists and still forms the " vexed " 

 question of modern Biology. 



I. THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



That characteristics acquired by the parent are trans- 

 mitted to the descendants has been an accepted axiom, 

 which was barely called into question until recent times. 

 In fact, Lamarck's theory of the progressive transformation 

 of the species through the effects of use and disuse takes for 

 granted that these effects wrought on the parent- organism 

 during its lifetime are handed down to the offspring, thus 

 accumulating in ever-increasing ratio in the successive 

 generations. Darwin, though he based his theory of 

 Organic Evolution on Natural Selection, which, through the 

 survival of the fittest, achieves a gradual improvement of 



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