Art and Science 



limits are assignable to the accumulated effects 

 of habit, provided the effects of habit, or 

 use and disuse, are supposed, as Mr. Darwin 

 supposed them, to be inheritable at all. Dar- 

 winians have at length woke up to the 

 dilemma in which they are placed by the 

 manner in which Mr. Darwin tried to sit on 

 the two stools of use and disuse, and natural 

 selection of accidental variations, at the same 

 time. The knell of Charles - Darwinism is 

 rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in 

 the general perception on the part of biologists 

 that we must either assign to use and disuse 

 such a predominant share in modification as 

 to make it the feature most proper to be in- 

 sisted on, or deny that the modifications, 

 whether of mind or body, acquired during a 

 single lifetime, are ever transmitted at all. 

 If they can be inherited at all, they can be 

 accumulated. If they can be accumulated at 

 all, they can be so, for anything that appears 

 to the contrary, to the extent of the specific 

 and generic differences with which we are sur- 

 rounded. The only thing to do is to pluck 



them out root and branch: they are as a 



271 



