48 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



characters. * They surely mark a loss not a gain 

 of individual character. The tailless cat has 

 suffered a deprivation of, not gained an addition 

 to, its structural character. Is there not an 

 essential difference between the mutilation or 

 injury which, being a loss, is therefore a subtrac- 

 tion from character, and the modification which is 

 a constituent part of its living being and growth ? 

 The latter, being part of its character, might well 

 be inherited in the germ-tendency ; the former, 

 being not part but loss, is not likely to be inherited. 

 Progress in the life of relation between the 

 organism and its environment may then have 

 reproductive consequences which injury or muti- 

 lation cannot have, the plastic forming part still 

 obeying the primal law of unicellular acquisition 

 which no longer rules, in the rigid formed part. 



But what, it may be asked, of the gradual 

 wasting and ultimate disappearance of a disused 

 organ which has become useless in the changed 

 conditions of the struggle for existence ? Is the 

 slow wasting due wholly, as alleged, to the con- 

 sequences of Panmixia whereby, owing to indis- 

 criminate unions of individuals some of which 

 have the organ poorly developed and are at no 

 disadvantage on that account, its average size is 

 gradually reduced in the species, it being no 

 longer fostered by natural selection ? Admitting 



* " It can hardly be doubted," says Weismann, " that mutila- 

 tions are acquired characters." 



