REPRESENTATIVE LAMARCKIANS 267 



In certain respects Le Dantec shows himself an 

 orthodox Darwinian, namely, in regard to slow varia- 

 tions, the only ones he recognises. We have seen else- 

 where his attitude towards the theories which counte- 

 nance the idea of discontinuous variations. 



While Le Dantec gladly reconciles the two points 

 of view, he is frankly hostile to the Neo-Darwinians, 

 not only on account of Weismann's theory of repre- 

 sentative particles, but also owing to the Neo-Darwin- 

 ian attitude to the question of the transmission of ac- 

 quired characters. 



Taking exception to the usual views on the subject, 

 Le Dantec considers the inheritance of acquired char- 

 acters as a fact much more common than the inher- 

 itance of innate characters. "The transmission by 

 parents to offspring of the unmodified hereditary 

 patrimony," he writes, "is only one special and iso- 

 lated example of a truly universal phenomenon, the 

 inheritance of acquired characters." 10 



Nearly all characters are acquired, but they do not 

 become fixed unless the influence which determines 

 their appearance is of sufficient duration and reaches 

 the very chemical constitution of the organism. Then 

 only can this influence make itself felt in the off- 

 spring. 



Le Dantec regards character as a corollary of the 

 idea of organic unity, for no modification of the or- 



10 EUments de Philosophie Biologiqvc, p. 211. 



