84 HEREDITY 



Herbert Spencer, in the course of a discussion of 

 this subject, quoted the case of his own hands, which 

 were distinctly under the average size. He said, " My 

 father and grandfather were schoolmasters, and their 

 hands were never developed by labour. Therefore I 

 also have small hands." Was this the real reason ? 

 Or would his hands have been equally small if his father 

 had been a labourer ? Here again we have the definite 

 opposition of opinion. It has been said that " it takes 

 three generations of idleness to make a pretty hand." 

 Is this an actual fact ? Could we distinguish the hand 

 of the aristocrat from that of the navvie's son, provided 

 that neither had himself engaged in physical toil ? 



To return to the business of defining what we mean 

 by an acquired character, we find this to be no easy 

 matter. It is scarcely worth while to attempt a formal 

 definition, because this involves us in such a tangle 

 of qualifying phrases that it fails to leave us with any 

 clear or definite idea. We shall try, however, to explain 

 what is meant by the term in the course of a few para- 



In the first place, an acquired character is one which 

 is acquired during the lifetime of the individual. We can, 

 in a certain sense, speak of a character which has been 

 acquired by a race. For instance, we may say that 

 the domestic fowl has acquired the character of laying 

 more eggs than the wild jungle fowl from which it has 

 sprung. But this has nothing to do with acquired 

 characters in the sense in which the term is used 

 scientifically. One of the commonest misunderstandings 

 of the question might be exemplified by such a state- 

 ment as that " acquired characters must be inherited, 

 otherwise the special characters of our modern breeds of 

 poultry, which have been acquired through selection, 

 would not be inherited, whereas they are so un- 

 doubtedly." This statement involves a loose usage of 

 words. An acquired character is not merely a character 

 which has been acquired. The term is used in a special 

 scientific sense, and we must adhere to this usage if we 

 are to understand each other. Only such characters, 



