70 THE GERM-PLASM THEORY 



heredity there can be no doubt, for it is a matter 

 of common notoriety that no descendant is 

 exactly like his progenitors though more or less 

 resembling them. 



With the question of natural selection we can- 

 not deal in this article, but the real point is that 

 before your variation can be selected, naturally, 

 artificially or sexually, it must originate, and the 

 question is how it originates. Lamarck believed 

 in the influence of the environment, and to a less 

 extent so did Darwin ; but in sharp contradistinc- 

 tion to these are at least the earlier views of 

 Weismann with regard to the heredity of acquired 

 conditions. 



In dealing with this part of the subject it will 

 first be necessary to distinguish mutilations from 

 other kinds of acquired conditions. When one 

 comes to think of the number of artificial deform- 

 ities which have been regularly produced by 

 different races for centuries : circumcisions, break- 

 ings of teeth, piercings of ears, nose and lips ; and 

 when one further reflects that there are no in- 

 stances of the transmission of such deformities, 

 still less of the formation of a permanently de- 

 formed race of individuals, it is rather difficult to 

 understand how the belief in the possible heredity 

 of mutilations has survived so long. It must be 

 set beside that other belief in maternal impressions, 

 so old, so often exploded, yet still so firmly held 

 by many. It is not possible here to go into the 

 evidence in connexion with this question of mutila- 

 tions. Those who desire to see the subject fully 

 treated may be referred to the last essay in the 



