42 PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES ON 



progression has had no influence on the development of his 

 brain ? 



Can we assert that these influences have not been transmitted 

 cumulatively, that is, with increasing effect every generation ? 



It may be that in the first instance the ancestors of the ourang- 

 outang and the ancestors of man had in the one case congenitally 

 stronger arms, and in the other stronger legs to begin with ; but 

 it is inconceivable that the life they were forced to lead, or, in 

 other words, their surroundings had no influence in strengthening 

 and further adapting their limbs to their mode of life from 

 generation to generation. 



The very fact that the ourang-outang had been driven to a tree 

 life would make his children take to that life by imitation very 

 early. This adaptation, becoming increased and strengthened by 

 each generation, would end by becoming instinctive. Having 

 become instinctive, it seems reasonable to suppose that it would 

 be inheritable. 



J. T. Cunningham quotes a much stronger case.* Flat fishes 

 have both their eyes situated on one side of their face, and one 

 whole side of their body is coloured, while the other side is white. 

 In these characters the adult flat-fish differs from its young 

 stage. 



He says : " To explain the evolution of these characters by 

 " congenital " variation and selection, it must be assumed that, in 

 the symmetrical ancestors, their beginnings occurred as variations 

 in adults, which had not exhibited them during the previous part 

 of their lives, and did not inherit them from their parents. And 

 yet no one has even attempted to show that any symmetrical fish 

 has exhibited a twisting of the eyes late in life, after having lived 

 since hatching with symmetrical eyes. No symmetrical fish has 

 been found in which, after the two sides had been similarly 

 coloured all its life, one of them became less pigmented than the 

 other. No variation in symmetrical fishes has been found which 

 occurred late in life, and consisted in the growth of the dorsal fin 

 or fins away from the median line of the body between one of the 

 eyes and the mouth. Yet all these variations must be assumed to 

 have occurred in the ancestors of flat-fishes, if their evolution is to 

 be explained by congenital variation and selection." 



* The " New Darwinism." — Westminster Review, July 1891, p. 25. 



