TRANSMISSION OF CHARACTER 193 



characters" and to draw a sharp line between cases of 

 transmission. Weismann deserves much credit for 

 having, by his criticisms, compelled scientists to make 

 a more searching analysis of the question and more 

 precise observations of the facts. 



By "acquired character" is meant such character as, 

 in an individual when compared to its parents, is not 

 only new (for all innate variations would answer to 

 this description) but does not originate in the ovum nor 

 in the spermatozoon. The word is used in a broader 

 sense by Montgomery, and in a more restricted sense 

 by Weismann. 



According to Montgomery, the problem is not well 

 formulated. We should not ask whether acquired 

 characters are transmissible; we should ask what ac- 

 quired characters are transmissible. In every fact of 

 the transformation of species, at every stage of the 

 changes undergone by species in the course of their 

 existence, we find incontestable evidence that charac- 

 ters acquired during the life span of the race have been 

 transmitted hereditarily. Every step forward in the 

 transformation of species is a new acquired character. 

 Either we must suppose that the entire development 

 of beings was determined from the beginning by the 

 nature of the ancestral germ plasm, so that phylogen- 

 esis were merely the carrying out of the original plan 

 (and then we must admit that variations appear 

 anatomically in the germ plasm) ; or we must sup- 



