410 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



"instinct*." Ray Lankester, in a letter to The Times (May 30th, 1910), 

 used the following words : 



" There is no reason to suppose that any structural condition of the brain corresponding to 

 knowledge or belief can be handed on from generation to generation by organic continuity — 

 that is to say by the reproductive particles — whatever fancies and suggestions of a contrary 

 tendency may have been indulged in by those who prefer mere speculation to scientific method." 



Besides this passage much else in Lankester's letter on Heredity and 

 Tradition was scored by Galton in his copy which I possess. He was moved 

 to write as follows : 



HEREDITY AND TRADITION. 



TO THE EDITOR OP THE TIMES. 



Sir, In your issue of May 30 Sir E. Ray Lankester maintains it to be almost unthinkable 

 that " definite belief, or what we call specific knowledge," could be transmitted organically from 

 one generation to another, and that very much of what is commonly ascribed to organic 

 inheritance is really acquired through education. The question, in short, refers to the parts 

 played respectively by Nature and by Nurture. I am not sure of the exact meaning to be 

 attached to the terms " specific knowledge " and " definite belief," as applied to other animals 

 than man, but it seems to me that a hen-reared duckling shows a specific and definite belief that 

 water is suitable for swimming by taking to it, notwithstanding the cries and gestures of its 

 foster- parent. 



Similarly that the terror of monkeys in a menagerie at the sight of a snake, or that of an 

 artificially incubated chicken at the cry of a hawk, or, again, the impulse that seizes on the 

 neuter females of a hive to massacre their brothers, whether the hive be reared from a single 

 queen or otherwise, all rank as specific and definite impulses. Very many other illustrative 

 cases could be adduced that will occur to most readers. 



Sir E. Ray Lankester quotes Speech as part of the great tradition of man. It is so, no doubt, 

 in its developed form, but not in its elementary condition of mere cries expressive of elementary 

 wants. Each kind of animal has its peculiar cry. I have long since instanced the cuckoo, which, 

 though nurtured in the nests of birds that chirp and twitter, utters its familiar note as soon as 

 it is grown up. 



Much more is inherited than educability — namely, the propensity to act in the same way 

 under similar circumstances which characterises all animals of the same race, whether they have 

 been reared from eggs and had no maternal teaching, or otherwise. Fowls reared in incubators, 

 fish in fish farms, dragon-flies, moths bred for silk or for show, each species behaves after its 

 kind in well-known ways, whether the individuals have been taught or left wholly to themselves. 



To some persons it seems almost profane to place the so-called material and non-material 

 matters upon the same plane of thought, but the march of science is fast obliterating the 

 distinction between the two, for it is now generally agreed that matter is a microcosm of 

 innumerable and, it may be, immaterial motes, and that the apparent vacancy of space is 

 a plenum of ether, that vibrates throughout like a solid. Francis Galton. 



Ray Lankester's reply was, I venture to think, by no means a strong 

 one. He introduced the word " human " and stated that we had no right to 

 consider that animals were, when exhibiting a particular behaviour, i.e. when 

 following animal instincts, in a state of mind which corresponds to that of 

 human knowledge or human belief. But the whole problem of the boundary line 

 between heredity and tradition is whether, and where, we have the right to draw 



* I have heard that certain primitive races, after defaecating, throw earth over their excre- 

 ment. No doubt this is attributed either to fear of magic being wrought on themselves or to 

 a nascent knowledge of sanitary welfare. But many dogs promptly cast with their hindpaws — 

 very ineffectually under domestication — sand or earth over their faeces; this is of course 

 attributed to instinct. 



