32 ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE INHERITED ? 



need be credited with any share in the cumula- 

 tive results of the invention of printing and the 

 steam-engine and gunpowder, or of freedom 

 and security under representative government, or 

 of science and art and the partial emancipation 

 of the mind of man from superstition, or of the 

 innumerable other improvements or changes that 

 take place under modern civilization. 



Mr. Spencer suggests an inquiry whether the 

 greater powers possessed by eminent musicians 

 were not mainly due to the inherited effect of 

 the musical practice of their fathers^ (p. 19). 

 But these great musicians inherited far more than 

 their parents possessed. The excess of their powers 

 beyond their parents' must surely be attributed 

 to spontaneous variation ; and who shall say that 

 the rest was in any way due to use-inheritance ? 

 If, too, the superiority of geniuses proves use- 

 inheritance, why should not the inferiority of 

 the sons of geniuses prove the existence of a 



