Kvi ARE ACQUIRED CHARACTERS INHERITED ? 325 



And he urges that, in order to prove that these many 

 small variations in different parts of the body have been 

 produced by natural selection, it must be shown that they 

 have influenced self-preservation. He then goes on to 

 show that this perceptive power can be increased by 

 exercise ; and concludes with a theory that the differences 

 of tactual perception in different parts are proportioned 

 to the amounts and varieties of contact with substances to 

 which they are subjected, and that these variations in 

 amount and kind of contact have produced diversities of 

 sensibility in the individual, which, by inheritance, have 

 been accimiulated in the offspring. 



Now, this whole inquiry, and the conclusions drawn 

 from it, seem to me (with all respect for Mr. Spencer's 

 great abilities) to afford a glaring example of taking the 

 unessential in place of the essential, and drawing conclu- 

 sions from a partial and altogether insufficient survey of 

 the phenomena. For this " tactual discriminativeness," 

 which is alone dealt with by Mr. Spencer, forms the least 

 important, and probably only an incidental portion of the 

 great vital phenomenon of skin-sensitiveness, which is at 

 once the watchman and the shield of the organism against 

 imminent external dangers. The sensations we receive by 

 means of the skin, of contact with various substances, 

 smooth or rough, blunt or pointed, dry or wet, cold or hot, 

 whether indifferent, or pleasurable, or painful, or agonising, 

 afford us information and safeguards without which we 

 could, in a state of nature, hardly exist uninjured for a 

 single day. And we shall find that the delicacy of this 

 absolutely essential danger-signal is almost exactly in pro- 

 portion to the vital importance of the part to be protected 

 from danger. Thus the maximum of sensitiveness is found 

 in the eye and its surrounding membranes, not because 

 they are most frequently subject to a variety of contacts, 

 for the very reverse is the case, but because this organ is 

 at once the most delicate and the most important for the 

 safety of the individual. So the hands and feet are not 

 very sensitive in those parts which are specially adapted 

 to come in contact with external objects, but in those 

 parts where the tendons, nerves, and iDlood-vessels which 



