FACTS 209 



sists as a useless rudiment. But this disagreeable and 

 dangerous rudiment may be long preserved in the species 

 unless the epidemic of appendicitis, which has surprised the 

 world for twenty years back, should be nothing other than 

 the outcome of the introduction into our life-conditions 

 of some unknown factor B which, after some generations, 

 may end by unmaking in us that which in other days some 

 other factor B had made. 



The Denial of the Heredity of Acquired Characters 



One thing may surprise us after all these considerations. 

 In sum, they show us that strictly speaking there is never 

 any hereditary transmission except of acquired characters. 

 Yet a whole school of naturalists for several years has tried 

 to deny the possibility of such transmission. The denial is 

 the logical consequence of blind acceptance of the fanciful 

 system of Weismann, in which the characters of an individual, 

 instead of being considered as actual elements of a state 

 of equilibrium, are taken to be static entities with an in- 

 dependent existence. 



The Neo-Darwinian school has thus been led to consider 

 that, in nature, no new characters ever make their appear- 

 ance, but that there is only a re-arrangement and jux- 

 taposition in variable order of characters which have existed 

 from the dawn of life. It is enough to recall the fanciful 

 defining of the characters of individuals for us to guess what 

 the scientific value of such a system really is. 



This wilful belief in static entities which do not and 

 cannot exist is enough to condemn beforehand a theory 

 which, moreover, obliges us to attribute a providential 

 value to pure chance. 



It is cited here only by way of mention, although it is 

 still almost universally adopted which may be explained 



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