

TRANSMISSION OF MODIFICATIONS 359 



and to the origin of races. It is not a matter that practically 

 concerns the thremmatologist, who is working with established 

 races and characters whose variations are fairly well circum- 

 scribed. The appearance of a positively new character among 

 any of these races would be cause for profound astonishment. 

 Under the present state of knowledge, and for our purposes, 

 we may say that there are no such things as acquired charac- 

 ters, in any proper sense of the term. It is a figure of speech 

 at best, and a most unfortunate one, at that. 



By " acquired character," as the term is commonly employed, 

 is always meant one of two things, (i) differences in the 

 degree of development of ordinary racial characters, or (2) the 

 peculiar use to which the individual has put his natural endow- 

 ments under his special conditions of life. 



These are differences in degree, not in kind. To speak of 

 them as characters is to dignify them with a term whose mean- 

 ing is eminently qualitative, not quantitative, and this it is that 

 has built up the false conception that individuals of the same 

 breed or race differ from each other in something that is real ; 

 that individual differences are all qualitative, whereas, within 

 the race, they are quantitative merely. 



To speak of these differences, which are only differences in 

 degree of development of ordinary racial characters, or at most 

 only differences in behavior of organs and parts known to be 

 able to respond to various stimuli and to function somewhat 

 differently under different conditions, to speak of differences 

 such as these personal acquisitions as acquired characters, is 

 to use the term "character" in an unfortunate and singularly 

 misleading sense. 



Now a difference which is nothing more than a degree of 

 development of a well-known character is not in itself a new 

 character. It is not in that sense an acquisition. It is more 

 in the nature of a realization of what was before a potential 

 possibility. 



Neither is a habit entitled to the term " new," or " acquired," 

 character. Habit refers only to the customary use of natural 

 faculties. Some characters, like those associated with the pro- 

 duction of the gastric juice, for example, have but a narrow 



