76 THE LAMARCKIAN DOCTRINE 



dark and the second to a fair husband, then, if the latter child 

 happens to be darker than its father, she is apt to attribute the 

 variation to the influence of her first husband. Though still widely 

 credited by animal breeders, telegony has been disproved experi- 

 mentally, at any rate as far as negative evidence can disprove 

 anything, by Professor Cossar Ewart. 1 



122. Both maternal impressions and telegony are interesting, 

 chiefly as indications of the curious looseness of thought and 

 expression which occasionally prevails in biological discussion. 

 They were often quoted in support of the Lamarckian doctrine ; 

 but, plainly, they have no bearing on it. In neither case is it 

 alleged that the mother transmits her acquirement to offspring. 

 In the one case she receives a mental impression, but the child is 

 supposed to develop something entirely different, a physical 

 abnormality. In the other she receives a physical impression, and 

 the child is said to develop a physical character, but not the 

 character the mother acquired. Thus a negress who has borne 

 a child to a white man, and who subsequently bears an ex- 

 ceptionally fair child to a negro, has not herself become fair. In 

 brief, the alleged phenomena do not belong to the category of trans- 

 mitted acquirements. They are marvels even more marvellous. 



123. As long as we think superficially the Lamarckian hypo- 

 thesis presents an appearance of fascinating simplicity and obvious- 

 ness. Since the multicellular organism is a ' unit ' for most purposes 

 of life, it is natural to regard it as a unit from the standpoint of 

 heredity to think of it as if it were unicellular, to suppose in 

 effect that the parts of the child are derived from similar parts of 

 the parent, and, therefore, that when a character is acquired by the 

 parent, the same character reappears in, is inherited by, the child. 

 If, in addition, we fail to observe that the complex higher 

 animals fit their environments mainly because they grow into 

 adaptation to them through the development of use-acquirements, 

 it is possible to use this very fact of adaptation in an argument 

 intended to demonstrate the inadequacy of Natural Selection as a 

 cause of evolution. But when we delve beneath the surface and 

 think with precision in terms of the germ-plasm instead of vaguely 

 in terms of the individual, the simplicity and obviousness vanish, 

 and the doctrine becomes almost unthinkable. We see that it 

 depends on a number of assumptions which, to say the least, are 

 wildly improbable. Manifestly, when an acquirement is said to be 

 transmitted, no real inheritance can occur ; for a character that is 



1 See The Penycuik Experiments (London : Adam and Chas. Black, 1899). 



