APPENDIX. 173 



Darwin's time most biologists have come to doubt 

 whether there is any evidence that acquired char- 

 acters are transmitted at all, and incline rather to 

 view racial change as altogether due to inborn varia- 

 tions, some of which variations have an advantage 

 over others ; Darwin himself, as Huxley pointed out, 1 

 laid less weight on the influence of acquired habits in 

 his later than in his earlier writings. Modern bio- 

 logists tend, therefore, to be more Darwinian than 

 Darwin in respect to their thoroughgoing adherence 

 to the action of selective influence ; but of necessity 

 they discard his theory of pangenesis, which was a 

 pictorial expression of Darwin's lingering Lamarckian 

 tendencies. Let me give some idea of what the Neo- 

 Darwinians picture to themselves as the " process of 

 heredity." It has been known now for many years 

 that every cell in the body, including the sperm cells 

 and ova, are descended from a fertilised ovum. Of 

 these cells of the body all obviously die except those 

 sperm cells and ova which give rise to the next 

 generation, and so on. We have, therefore, a con- 

 tinuing chain of actual organic matter linking every 

 living form with those that are most ancestral and 

 remote, and from these chains all the so-called living 

 individuals that have ever existed have, as it were, 

 been thrown off. Many have emphasised this point, 

 Owen, Haeckel and others; but perhaps Francis 

 Galton must be given much of the credit of clearly 

 stating it as a fact to be remarked, though similar 

 viows have more recently been popularised among 



1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii., p. 14. 



