216 DEGENERATION 



actually does. For it would require sexual union of all the 

 individuals of a species repeated through many generations, 

 while selection remained inactive. Pammixis, all-mingling, 

 can only mean that all attain to sexual intercourse irrespective 

 of selection ; not only the individuals which in this or that 

 direction are best fitted for the maintenance and improvement 

 of the species, unite sexually, but in these directions there is 

 no longer any best or better in these directions no further 

 selection is made : thus all individuals, whether well or ill 

 provided in these particular respects, succeed in reproducing 

 themselves, and so the characters in question are gradually 

 lost. What length of time, I repeat, would be required for 

 functions to degenerate, if they could only degenerate in this 

 way, and how rapidly they do actually degenerate. Scarcely 

 a few thousand years were required for the most powerful, 

 most dominant nations to deteriorate, to degenerate mentally, 

 and even bodily, to the very limits of capacity for existence. 

 Two generations are sufficient in a community for the citizens 

 who, from wealthy benefices and foundations, have become 

 accustomed to an idle life, to degenerate, not by pammixis, 

 but because they no longer exert their powers. In rapid 

 alternation, after a small number of generations, the capacity 

 and powers of the burgess families rise and fall; dignified 

 or parasitic life continued through a few generations leads to 

 completely unhealthy mental decay. 



Not cessation of selection is here the principal influence, 

 but primarily the neglect of mental and bodily exercise, 

 whose effects rapidly and powerfully transmit themselves. 



But I think I need not go further into the evidence that 

 the degeneration of organs is a process which is to be ex- 

 plained as the inheritance of acquired characters, especially 

 when what has been previously said on the subject and the 

 countless facts which comparative anatomy and physiology 

 contribute to this evidence are borne in mind. And the great 



