502 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



are born, then we should expect to see indications of such 

 transmission in the continuous increase of mental power 

 wherever any family or group of families have for several 

 generations been subjected to culture or training of any 

 particular kind. It has, in fact, been claimed that this is 

 the case, for in his presidential address to the Biological 

 Society of Washington, in January, 1891, Mr. Lester F. 

 Ward argues that not only is Professor Weismann's great 

 ability a result of the rigid methods of training in the 

 German universities, but that 



' ' those rigid methods themselves have been the product of a 

 series of generations of such training, transmitted in small increments 

 and diffused in increasing effectiveness to the whole German 

 people. . . . And the fact, that out of the barbaric German hordes 

 of the Middle Ages there has been developed the great modern race 

 of German specialists is one of the most convincing proofs of the 

 transmission of acquired characters, as well as of the far-reaching value 

 to the future development of the race of such an educational 

 system as that which Germany has had for the last two or three 

 centuries." 



It will, I think, be admitted that, if this is " one of the 

 most convincing proofs " of the transmission of the effects 

 of culture, the theory of its transmissibility has but a weak 

 foundation ; for not only may the facts be explained in 

 another way, but there is another body of facts which 

 point with at least equal clearness in an exactly opposite 

 direction. It may be said, for instance, that the eminence 

 of German specialists in science is due primarily to 

 special mental qualities which have always been character- 

 istic of the German race, and to the facilities afforded for 

 the culture of those faculties throughout life, by the large 

 numbers of professorships in their numerous universities, 

 and by the comparative simplicity of German habits, which 

 renders the position of professor attractive to the highest 

 intellects. And when we turn to other countries we find 

 facts which tend in the opposite direction. In England, 

 for example, during many centuries, Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge Universities were closed to nonconformists, and 

 their honours and rewards were reserved for members of 

 the Established Church, and very largely for the families 



