The Transmission of Intelligent Acquisitions 8i 



§ I. The Transmission of Intelligent Acquisitions 



First, accepting the statement of the fact of mental acqui- 

 sition or ' selection through pleasure, pain, experience, asso- 

 ciation, etc' (on which, see third below), Professor Cope 

 cites the second paper {Science, March 20), in which I 

 hold that consciousness makes acquisitions of new move- 

 ments by such selections. He then says — if so, then I 

 admit the Lamarckian factor. But not at all; it is just 

 the point of the article to refute Romanes by showing that 

 adaptation by intelligent selection makes the Lamarckian 

 factor unnecessary. And in this way, /.^., this sort of adapta- 

 tion on the part of a creature keeps that creature alive by 

 supplementing his reflex and instinctive actions, ^o prevents 

 the operation of nattiral selection in his case, and gives the 

 species time to get congenital variations in the lines that 

 have thus proved to be useful (see cases cited).^ Further- 

 more, all the resources of ' social transmission ' — the hand- 

 ing down of intelHgent acquisitions by parental instruction, 

 imitation, gregarious life, etc. — come in directly to take 

 the place of the physical inheritance of such adaptations. 

 This influence Professor Cope, it is good to see, admits ; 

 although in admitting it, he does not seem to see that he 

 is practically throwing away the Lamarckian factor. For 

 instead of limiting this influence to human progress, we 

 have to extend it to all animals with gregarious and family 

 life, to all creatures that have any ability to imitate, and 

 finally to all animals which have consciousness sufficient 

 to enable them to make conscious adaptations themselves ; 

 for such creatures will have children able to do the same, 

 and it is unnecessary to say that the children must inherit 



1 Italics in the original paper. 



