694 APPENDIX C. 



whom congenital short sight is notoriously prevalent, have be( 

 made shortsighted by inheritance of modifications due to con- 

 tinual reading of print requiring close attention, is by some 

 disputed. It is strange, however, that if there exists no causal 

 connexion between them, neither trait occurs without the other 

 elsewhere. But for the belief that there is a causal connexion we 

 have the verifying testimony of oculists. From Dr. Lindsay 

 Johnson I have cited cases within his professional experience of 

 functionally-produced myopia transmitted to children ; and he 

 asserts that other oculists have had like experiences. 



Development of the musical faculty in the successive members 

 of families from which the great composers have come, as well as 

 in the civilized races at large, is not to be explained by natural 

 selection. Even when it is great, the musical faculty has not a 

 life-saving efficiency as compared with the average of faculties ; 

 for the most highly gifted have commonly passed less prosperous 

 lives and left fewer offspring than have those possessed of ordi- 

 nary abilities. Still less can it be said that the musical faculty 

 in mankind at large has been developed by survival of the fittest. 

 No one will assert that men in general have been enabled to 

 survive and propagate in proportion as their musical appreciation 

 was great. 



The transmission of nervous peculiarities functionally pro- 

 duced is alleged by the highest authorities — Dr. Savage, presi- 

 dent of the Neurological Society, and Dr. Hughlings Jackson. 

 The evidence they assign confirms, and is confirmed by, that 

 which the development of the musical faculty above named 

 supplies. 



Here, then, we have sundry groups of facts directly support- 

 ing the belief that functionally-wrought modifications descend 

 from parents to offspring. 



Now let us consider the position of those Darwinians who dis- 

 sent from Darwin, and who make light of all this evidence. We 

 might naturally suppose that their own hypothesis is unassailable. 

 Yet, strange to say, they admit that there is no direct proof that 

 any species has been established by natural selection. The proof 

 is inferential only. 



The certainty of an axiom does not give certainty to the 

 deductions drawn from it. That natural selection is, and always 

 has been, operative is incontestable. Obviously I should be the 

 last person to deny that survival of the fittest is a necessity : 

 its negation is inconceivable. The Neo-Darwinians, however, 

 judging from their attitude, apparently assume that firmness of 

 the basis implies firmness of the superstructure. But however 

 high may be the probability of some of the conclusions drawn, 



