CHAPTER XXXI 

 HEREDITY OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS 



IN the course of successive functional assimilations the 

 hereditary patrimony of the egg is transmitted to all new 

 parts which are added to the body of the growing individual. 

 This hereditary patrimony is accompanied, in the various 

 parts of the individual, by local or topographic characters 

 special colloid characters which make of this protoplasm a 

 muscle and of that a neuron and of yet another an epithelium. 



The child resembles the parent in virtue of the morpho- 

 biological theorem. If, therefore, there should exist at 

 any point of the parent an element capable of living by 

 itself, capable of withdrawing itself without dying from 

 the general co-ordination a reproductive element, in a 

 word there would be found an analogous element in a 

 corresponding point of the child. (I again neglect the 

 difficulty arising from sexual reproduction, which is to be 

 studied in a chapter by itself.) 



This reproductive element which appears in the child 

 will have its hereditary patrimony from the egg which 

 gave birth to the child through the successive variations 

 determined by functional assimilation. The successive 

 variations are always limited by the needs of conservation 

 of life ; and so we can foresee that the hereditary 

 patrimony of the child-egg will differ very little from 

 that of the parent-egg. We have even seen that when the 



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