INADEQUACY OF NATURAL SELECTION, ETC. 073 



ancestral primates. No evidence of any such use was given ; no 

 imaginable use was assigned. It was simply suggested that there 

 perhaps was a use. 



In my rejoinder, after indicating the illusory nature of this 

 proceeding (which is much like offering a cheque on a bank 

 whore no assets have been deposited to meet it), I pointed out 

 that had the evidence furnished by the tongue tip never been 

 mentioned, the evidence otherwise furnished amply sufficed. I 

 then drew attention to the fact that this evidence had been passed 

 over, and tacitly inquired why. 



No reply.* 



In his essay on a The All-Sufficiency of Natural Selection," 

 Professor Weismann set out, not by answering one of the argu- 

 ments I had used, but by importing into the discussion an argu- 

 ment used by another writer, which it was easy to meet. It had 

 been contended that the smallness and deformity of the little toe 

 are consequent upon the effects of boot-pressure, inherited from 

 generation to generation. To this Professor Weismann made the 

 sufficient reply that the fusion of the phalanges and otherwise 

 degraded structure of the little toe, exist among peoples who go 

 barefoot. 



In my " Rejoinder " I said that though the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters does not explain this degradation in the way 

 alleged, it explains it in a way which Professor Weismann over- 

 looks. The cause is one which has been operating ever since the 

 earliest anthropoid creatures began to decrease their life in trees 

 and increase their life on the earth's surface. The mechanics of 

 walking and running, in so far as they concern the question at 

 issue, were analyzed ; and it was shown that effort is economized 

 and efficiency increased in proportion as the stress is thrown 

 more and more on the inner digits of the foot and less and less 

 on the outer digits. So that thus the foot furnishes us simul- 

 taneously with an instance of increase from use and of decrease 

 from disuse ; a further disproof being yielded of the allegation 

 that co-operative parts vary together, since we have here co-opera- 

 tive parts of which one grows while the other dwindles. 



I ended by pointing out that, so far from strengthening his 

 own case, Professor Weismann had, by bringing into the contro- 



* In "The All-Sufficiency of Natural Selection " (Contemporary Review, 

 Sept., 1893, p. 311), Professor Weismann writes : "I have ever contended 

 that the acceptance of a principle of explanation is justified, if it can be 

 shown that without it certain facts are inexplicable." Unless, then, Prof. 

 Weismann can show that the distribution of discriminativeness is otherwise 

 explicable, he is bound to accept the explanation I have given, and admit tl.o 

 inheritance of acquired characters. 



