Alfred Russel Wallace, LL. D. 13 



Weissmann and the other Postdarwinians, however, admit 

 the acquisition and inheritance of what they call " congeni- 

 tal " characters, which appear only in the reproductive ele- 

 ments, and which they distinguish broadly from the char- 

 acters which may be acquired by the body in general through 

 use and disuse, and which they call " somatic characters." 

 They endeavor to prove their hypothesis that the latter are 

 not inherited by endeavoring to reproduce mutilations, such 

 as by the breeding of mice from which the tails have been 

 amputated, etc. It is, however, evident that the distinction 

 between "congenital" and "somatic" acquired characters 

 does not exist, since evolution shows that all characters have 

 been acquired at some period of time, and that the only 

 difference in such characters is their greater or less antiquity. 

 The non-inheritance of mutilations illustrates the principle 

 that the general relations of the organism contribute to the 

 production of a change of character, and that no isolated 

 and sporadic, and therefore superficial, change affects the re- 

 productive elements sufficiently to be transmitted. Pale- 

 ontology shows that the causes which have been sufficient to 

 produce inheritable changes of structure have been in daily 

 or hourly operation for long ages ; and that the results have 

 been the gradual evolution of mechanisms especially adapted 

 to the needs of their possessors in their relations to the en- 

 vironment. 



We rise to another stage of the subject if, when we grant 

 that the movements of the organism have produced the 

 changes observed and which constitute progressive evolution 

 (and vice versa), we seek for the causes that underlie ani- 

 mal motion. The inference on the part of those who ob- 

 serve living animals is that their conscious states influence 

 their movements. To this two answers are made. One of 

 these is by a school of physiologists who declare that a con- 

 scious (i. e., a mental) state can not influence (i. e., control or 

 direct) the motion of a material body. The other objection 

 is that animal movements are not nearly always consciously 

 performed. To the latter objection it is replied that un- 

 conscious (automatic or reflex) acts are simply the product 

 of education during conscious states, and that a designed 

 act could not have originated in any other way. The first 

 objection that consciousness can not affect motion of mate- 

 rial bodies is a theoretical inference based on the supposed 

 impossibility of violating the law of the conservation of en- 

 ergy. It is a special statement of a general principle viz., 



