Heredity, Variation and Genius 31 



other combinations. Even if it survive, there is 

 a future environment, favourable or unfavourable, 

 to reckon with. Time, again, which is so pre- 

 cious within the brief compass of a single life is 

 of no account in the life of the species. And the 

 Lamarckians may justly claim the right which 

 the exclusive advocates of natural selection so 

 freely use, to postulate a long course of time for 

 the minute cumulative additions necessary to 

 convert the initial tendency or variation which is 

 of no imaginable use into structure that serves 

 an end. When the wild pansy is planted in 

 garden soil it does not change at once ; the varia- 

 tions in the colour and size of flowers appear in 

 the course of generations, never in the first genera- 

 tion, the transformation by external influences 

 being gradual. Restrict the term " acquired cha- 

 racters " to the manifest inheritance of the manifest 

 acquisitions of parental structure, excluding the 

 notion of acquired germ-tendencies to evolve duly 

 in succeeding generations, and the non-inheritance 

 is not likely to be seriously contested. 



Is it not strange that the innate boon or bane 

 of acquired parental character has been so abso- 

 lutely denied to offspring ? The theory of Weis- 

 mann as originally propounded by him and eagerly 

 acclaimed by his followers, although now appa- 

 rently modified in some measure, was that no 

 quality or character acquired by parents through 

 the functions and habits of life in the changes and 

 chances of environment was ever constitutionally 



