i84 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



que par consequent les modifications preuvent non-seulement 

 devenir hereditaires, mais qu'elles preuvent encore servir de 

 moyen pour arriver a d'autres modifications, a etendre et a 

 multiplier de plus en plus les series typiques." 



Weismann and those who agree with him, contrary to 

 Darwin and H. Spencer, maintain that " characters acquired 

 by the soma are not transmissible ". Darwin based his theory 

 on a vast accumulation of facts derived from the cultivation of 

 plants and the domestication of animals, and thence deduced 

 the above opposite conclusion. Take, for example, the cab- 

 bage. Brassica oleracea produces no varieties in the wild 

 state. It has done so to a very large extent under cultivation. 

 They have developed or " acquired " characters thereby, 

 through the complex and richer soils, as compared with that 

 of their native habitat. 



The "acquired characters" of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, 

 greens, savoys, etc., are now fixed and hereditary. 



What is true for the cabbage is true for all other garden 

 races. 



If evidence is required from natural conditions, it is 

 abundantly forthcoming. Indeed, how Evolution could exist 

 at all without the transmission of characters acquired by the 

 S07na is inconceivable. 



It is asserted by the present Darwinians that the earlier 

 writers, as Herbert Spencer, Cope and Darwin, as well as the 

 later, Haeckel, Buchner, assume the point; but bring forward 

 no experimental evidence. 



The probability is that the inductive evidence is so over- 

 whelming that it becomes a " moral certainty " and axiomatic, 

 and so needs no " demonstration ". Hence Darwin never saw 

 any necessity for demonstrating so obvious a fact. 



Still, as Weismann and others have put in a negation, one 

 must attempt to show where the fallacy lies. 



Mr. Adam Sedgwick, for example, in a paper read before 

 the British Association, 1899, and published in Nature, 21st 

 September, 1899, asks the question: "Is it possil^le by sub- 



