196 transmission of acquired characters 



until they are examined critically. The late Duke of Argyll, 

 in one of his scientific excursuses, said the world was strewn with 

 illustrations of the inheritance of acquired characters, and Dr. 

 W. Haacke, a very wide-awake evolutionist, has compared the 

 evidences for the affirmative to the sand on the sea-shore for 

 multitude, yet neither furnishes us, so far as we are aware, with 

 a single case that will bear analysis. The affirmative may be an 

 obvious interpretation of the results of evolution, but the ob- 

 vious interpretation is seldom the right one. The sun does not 

 go round the earth. 



(2) The affirmative is an interpretation which seems to make 

 the theory of organic evolution simpler ; it suggests a more direct 

 and rapid method than the natural selection of germinal varia- 

 tions. If to a growing and varying nature or germinal inheritance 

 there were continually being added the results of peculiarities in 

 nurture, the rate of evolution would be quickened, both upwards 

 and downwards. But our first business is to find out whether 

 the hypothesis actually consists with experience. 



Dr. Walter Kidd has argued carefully and ingeniously that all 

 departures of hair-direction from a simple and primitive tj^pe 

 may be interpreted as due to mechanical causes, namely, stimuli 

 repeated immensely often. The difficulty here and always is 

 with the presuppositions of the interpretation. 



(3) We are so accustomed in human affairs to the entailment 

 of acquired gains from generation to generation, to standing on 

 the shoulders of our ancestors' achievements, that many find 

 it difficult to refrain from projecting this on organic nature. 

 They forget that the greater part of our entailing process comes 

 about through our social heritage, which is altogether apart 

 from our natural inheritance. 



(4) A fourth reason is that many fictitious or anecdotal cases 

 of the inheritance of acquired characters continue circulating. 

 The inheritance of a letter branded upon the arm, which Aristotle 

 notes, is still in the popular currency, though it is perhaps an 



