36 CHANGE 



they were inherited by the offspring. Can acquired 

 peculiarities become innate, or do they differ from 

 peculiarities which arise spontaneously in not 

 being transmissible to the next generation ? This 

 question introduces us to the most controversial 

 of biological questions. It is very strongly 

 maintained by an influential school of thought 

 that acquired characters are not heritable, that 

 offspring are not innately affected by the ex- 

 periences of their parents (unless these have 

 injured the reproductive organs), and have no 

 inborn tendency to reproduce any change of 

 colour, form, or habit which their parents may have 

 contracted. This conclusion is certainly supported 

 by a mass of negative evidence, showing that in 

 particular cases peculiarities of form or habit con- 

 tracted by parents are not passed on to their chil- 

 dren. Circumcision has been practised by some 

 races from remote antiquity without producing 

 any hereditary results. It is indeed maintained by 

 Dr. August Weismann, and other great authorities, 

 that the reproductive organs are in origin and in 

 functioning quite distinct from the body of sense 

 and motion, and that bodily experiences can, 

 therefore, have no effect upon the cells which these 

 organs produce. But this theory assumes that 

 impulses arise from organs, instead of organs 

 from impulses ; and it is based upon grounds 

 which are in great measure conjectural. Its 

 opponents have collected a large number of facts 

 which indicate that in some cases acquired 

 peculiarities have actually been inherited. In 

 this uncertainty we may again remember that 

 Life does not limit itself to a single line of action, 

 and that it may in some cases permit what in 

 other cases it refuses. It does not follow that 

 acquired characters never become innate because 

 it is proved that they very frequently do not 



