194 Inheritance of Acquired Characters 



must nevertheless in many cases be so inconsiderable 

 in amount, that they could not possibly constitute such 

 an advantage as to give natural selection anything to act 

 on. But Weismann in order to extricate himself from 

 this embarassment needs only to repeat here again his 

 habitual, axiomatic, already mentioned reply that we 

 are unable to measure the degree of selective power of 

 the struggle for existence. 



Others object that certain characters due to functional 

 adaptation are altogether useless to the species. One 

 can conceive how they might be inborn in individuals 

 if one admits the inheritance of acquired characters, 

 whereas they would be quite inexplicable if one sought 

 to ascribe them to natural selection alone. But Weis- 

 mann has always the answer at hand that one cannot 

 judge of their present or past usefulness. A typical 

 example of these discussions which logical processes are 

 powerless to decide is the question debated in the Spencer- 

 Weismann polemic upon the especially acute taste sense 

 of the tongue papillae. While Spencer attributes it to 

 the continual rubbing of the tongue against the teeth 

 and states that it is without utility for the organism; 

 Weismann on the contrary asserts that it may have been 

 of some use, at least in the past. We do not forget in 

 this connection that the question might also be raised 

 whether this fine sense of taste is really inborn or is 

 not rather acquired anew in each individual after birth. 



Others regard natural selection as powerless to bring 

 about any transformation because the fortuitous vari- 

 ations or individual deviations, upon which it is able to 

 act, are constantly destroyed by amphimixis. Weismann 

 can always reply that the fortuitous variations or devi- 

 ations preserved in an individual by natural selection are 



