14 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



contribution to the science of evolution since the publication of Dar- 

 win's Origin of Species,^ an opinion with which the great majority of 

 biologists will agree, although the terms employed for the two classes, 

 the Inherited and the Non-inherited, together with the ideas under- 

 lying them, were shown by Adam Sedgwick, at Dover in 1899, 

 Archdall Reid, and others, as well as by Goodrich himself, to be 

 incorrect. Nevertheless it will probably be impossible to abandon 

 the word ' acquired,' employed by Erasmus Darwin (1794), Lamarck 

 (1809), and Prichard (1813) as well as by later authorities. Whenever 

 environmental conditions are followed by characteristic changes, 

 absent when these conditions are absent ; or when such changes 

 follow the use or disuse of the parts of an organism, or the education 

 it has received, then we have before us the ' acquired ' characters 

 maintained by Weismann to be incapable of hereditary transmission. 

 This vital conclusion, accepted, as I believe it is, by nearly all 

 biologists, is not appreciated as it ought to be by the general public. 

 A brief statement of a single piece of evidence may convince some 

 who are doubtful about a conclusion with which human life is very 

 deeply concerned. 



My old friend the late A. A. Macdonell, Professor of Sanskrit at 

 Oxford, spoke two languages, English and German, as they are 

 spoken by native Englishmen and Germans. I asked him whether he 

 thought it was possible for any mature person to learn a foreign lan- 

 guage so perfectly that he would be mistaken for a native. He replied 1 

 that he was sure it could not be done and that his own ability 

 to speak the two languages as he did had been only made possible 

 because as a small child he had been continually taken backwards 

 and forwards between the two countries. Yet any human being trans- 

 ported as a baby from his own country to another and brought up 

 there among the natives will learn to speak as they speak. All the 

 past generations, however many, during which his ancestors spoke 

 the language af his birthplace, will count for nothing, will not retard 

 his acquisition of another tongue or modify it in any way. 



An interesting and amusing example is provided by the futile 

 striving of an Englishman to pronounce the Welsh double-1, generally 

 attempted by the substitution of ' th.' And even the advice given 

 by a Welsh clergyman to the English Bishop of his diocese is unlikely 

 to bring success : ' You must put the tip of your Right Reverend 

 tongue against the roof of your Right Reverend mouth, and hiss like 

 a goose.' 



The result of education as an ' acquired ' character in the Weis- 

 mannian sense is of such special importance that I think it is well 

 to quote the conclusions stated by Sir Ray Lankester in his address to 

 the seventy-fifth meeting of the Association at York. He then main- 

 tained that the ' power of building up appropriate cerebral mechanism 



