14 HEREDITY AND INHERITANCE 



the stock in respect of a given character ; we mean observed 

 differences minus all bodily modifications, we mean changes 

 which have a germinal origin. 



These definitions will become clearer in the course of our 

 exposition. Our present point is to warn the reader against 

 starting on his journey without reading the conditions on the 

 ticket, and to protest against the slackness with which the terms 

 are so often used. A large part of the energy expended on the 

 long-drawn-out controversy as to the transmission of acquired 

 characters or modifications has been wasted through inattention 

 to the precise significance of the technical terms employed.* 



Td speak of a man " fighting against his heredity " may 

 express a real fact, but it is verbally erroneous. The American's 

 question, "Is my grandfather's environment my heredity ? " 

 is an offence against ordinary English as well as against scientific 

 phrasing ; it should probably read, " Have the structural 

 changes induced by environmental influences on my grand- 

 father's body had any effect on my inheritance ? " Nor can 

 we pardon from an expert such a sentence as this, " I look upon 

 Heredity as an acquired character, the same as form or colour, 

 or sensation is, and not as an original endowment of matter " 

 (Bailey, 1896, p. 23). When the moralist writes : " The only 

 limitations imposed on a man are those which his own nature 

 makes," the biologist asks, " But what is his own nature ? Is 



* It may be noted that Galton's work on Natural Inheritance is rightly 

 so entitled, for it deals mainly with a statistical comparison of the char- 

 acters of successive generations. Inheritance is also the chief subject of 

 the works of Lucas and Ribot, although these have heredity for their 

 title. Or, to take another example, Weismann's work entitled The Germ- 

 Plasm, a Theory of Heredity, is in great part a theory of heredity, but, 

 naturally enough, it is also in great part a theory of development. The 

 German language has the same word, Vererbung, for both Heredity and 

 Inheritance. As the English language is rich in related terms, laxity 

 of expression is less excusable. Besides " heredity " and " inheritance " 

 we have "heritage," "transmission," and so on. But to speak of the 

 parent as transmitting is apt to suggest an erroneous idea. 



