The Transmission of Intellige7it Acquisitions ^^t 



' But since the biologists have generally repudiated Weis- 

 mannism/ etc. If this means Darwinism, my impression 

 is that even on the purely biological side, the tendency is 

 the other way. Lloyd Morgan has pretty well come over ; 

 Romanes took back before he died many of his arguments 

 in favour of the Lamarckian factor ; and quite recently 

 a paleontologist, Professor Osborn, — if he is correctly re- 

 ported in Science, April 3, 1896, p. 530, — argues against 

 Professor Cope on this very point with very much the 

 same sort of argument as this which is made here.^ Yet 

 Professor Cope will agree with me that this sort of argit- 

 mentum ex ajitoritate is not very convincing. 



But Professor Cope goes on to say that I ' both admit 

 and deny Weismannism ' ; on the ground that * his [my] 

 denial of inheritance only covers the case of psychological 

 sports.' But the connection is not evident. If Professor 

 Cope means denial of the inheritance of acquired charac- 

 ters, then it is denied equally of sports and of other crea- 

 tures; but it is not denied that the native 'sportness' (!) of 

 sports tends to be transmitted. In my view the * mas- 

 siveness of front ' which social progress shows (and which 

 Professor Cope accepts), shows that in social transmission 

 the individual is usually swamped in the general movement, 



1 Since this was written Professor Osborn has read a paper which confirms 

 the statement of the text. Professor Osborn's expression ' ontogenic vari- 

 ations ' i.e., those brought out by ' environment (which includes all the 

 atmospheric, chemical, nutritive, motor, and psychical circumstances under 

 which the animal is reared) ' seems to make these adaptations after all 

 constitutional. As Professor Osborn says, this will not do for all cases ; and 

 I think it will not do for instinct, where constitutional variations without the 

 aid of conscioiisfiess would not suffice (as Romanes says) to keep the animal 

 alive while correlated variations were being perfected. But it seems to 

 answer perfectly where intelligent or other accommodations supplement the 

 constitutional variations in the species. See Appendix A, I. 



