222 DARWINISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF LIFE 



often it used to be said that mutilations were inherited, 

 yet all the alleged proofs of it have been found invalid ! 

 There is not a single case in which a pup has been born 

 with its tail cut off, or an individual born, amongst the 

 Semitic races that practise circumcision, with that 

 particular mutilation, though it has been practised by 

 them for thousands of years. It has been found just 

 as impossible to prove a case of a change that had 

 occurred in an animal's lifetime being transmitted to 

 its young. We sometimes read in sporting papers that 

 red spots have been found on the young in the womb 

 of a deer at the spot where the ball struck the mother. 

 That would be a very sudden inheritance of acquired 

 characters ! Many people still believe that pregnant 

 mothers can influence their offspring by fear, that the 

 child will have burn-marks if the mother has seen a big 

 flame before birth ; it is quite arbitrary to call the red 

 spots burn-marks, instead of blood-marks, or anything 

 else. It is also thought that crippled limbs from a fall 

 can be inherited. 



These beliefs have not been sustained by scientific 

 inquiry. The many cases that have been investigated 

 by experts have generally been explained in the sense 

 that the feature in question was already in the family as 

 a congenital characteristic. Not a single case has been 

 established scientifically in which an acquired character, 

 a mutilation or a habit, to which there was not a 

 predisposition, was transmitted to children. 



It is, of course, a different matter with infection and 

 poisoning. These affect the germ ; they taint the 

 whole body, and do not leave the ova and sperm 



