ee oo ee 
84 HEREDITY. 
has no previous knowledge, can say which is the child of 
the youthful and which of aged parents. 
“Apparently, therefore, the whole of the parent’s ac- 
quirements have no effect on the child. Surely no evi- 
dence could be stronger.” * 
Herbert Spencer claims that “the inheritance of ac- 
quired characters” is a necessary supplement to natural 
selection. “Close contemplation of the facts impresses 
me more strongly than ever with the two alternatives— 
either there has been inheritance of acquired characters. 
or there has been no evolution.” Again, “the inheri- 
tance of acquired characters, which it is now the fashion 
of the biological world to deny, was by Mr. Darwin 
fully recognized and often insisted on.” ‘The neo-Dar- 
winists, however, do not admit this cause at all.” He 
admits that known facts which show that acquired char- 
acters are inherited are few, but he thinks that they are 
‘‘as large a number as can be expected, considering the 
difficulty of observing them and the absence of search.” 
Irom the above, we see that the biological world is 
against Mr. Spencer’s view; that he would abandon the 
theory of evolution unless acquired characters had been 
inherited, but that facts in support of this theory are 
meager. ‘Biologists in the above instance, as well as in 
others, differ in theory as to fundamental principles of 
evolution. He who imagines that the theory of organic 
evolution has been proved to the point of demonstration, 
has but to read the contentions of evolutionists themselves 
* The undoubted transmission of siphilis to off-spring might be 
regarded as a case of transmission of an acquired characteristic. 
But the case is not in point since congenital siphilis is, properly, 
due to a prenatal infection, the bacillus entering the very germ- 
plasm of the human ovum (egg). Medical science, generally, has 
become very cautious in the use of the word “hereditary.’’ There 
is almost unanimity among medical men in the denial of heredity as 
a factor in tuberculosis and cancer. Most physicians are honest 
enough to say that they know considerably less about these things 
than was “known” ten and twenty years ago. 
