CHAP, xvin A "FAIRY TALE OF SCIENCE"? 217 



guous results. " Nothing is so deceptive as facts " ; tlie 

 same facts are capable of such different interpretations. 

 Apparently, Weismann has shown that the range of 

 the " Lamarckian factor" was grossly exaggerated. 

 To that extent facts openly support him. Whether he 

 has proved that use -inheritance does not occur at all 

 is another question. The non-inheritance of mutila- 

 tions, even such as have been persisted in by custom 

 through age after age Chinese foot-binding is a notable 

 instance furnishes a strong argument in Weismann 's 

 favour. And even hostile evidence can be robbed of 

 much of its strength. Are there not blind fish in 

 the mammoth caves of Kentucky, and in similar 

 caverns elsewhere? Have not preachers freely used 

 this illustration of the bad results of evil habit? 

 Yes; but if there was no premium on eyesight, fish 

 which "happened" to be born blind would have an 

 equal chance of living and begetting progeny with 

 fish that saw. Give it time, and natural selection 

 or in the opposite case, panmixia; the cessation of 

 natural selection will produce all the results com- 

 monly attributed to use -inheritance. Use -inheritance 

 would be a much quicker process ; but have patience 

 with natural selection (or with panmixia), in a few tens 

 of thousands of years it will do all that you require. 

 Other suggestions are that, in dark caves, the fish 

 which put part of its physiological capital into a super- 

 fluous sense would be positively disadvantaged by its 

 eyes in the struggle for existence. Having wasted its 

 resources on an inherited habit of luxury, it would 

 fail in securing the necessaries of life. And again, 

 Professor Kay Lankester has suggested that the fishes 

 with good eyesight would find cracks by which they 

 could swim away, leaving behind them only the blind 



