684 PSYCHOLOGY. 



The evidence for Mr. Darwin's view is too complex to 

 be given in this place. To my own mind it is quite convinc- 

 ing. If, with the Darwinian theory in mind, one re-reads 

 the list of examples given in favor of the Lamarckian theory, 

 one finds that many of the cases are irrelevant, and that 

 some make for one side as well as for the other. This is 

 so obvious in many of the cases that it is needless to point 

 it out in detail. The shrugging child and the begging pup, 

 e.g., prove somewhat too much. They are examples so 

 unique as to suggest spontaneous variation rather than in- 

 herited habit. In other cases the observations much need 

 corroboration, e.g., the effects of not training for a generation 

 in sporting dogs and race-horses, the difference between 

 young wild rabbits born in captivity and young tame ones, 

 the cumulative effect of many generations of captivity on 

 wild ducks, etc. 



Similarly, the increased wariness of the large birds, of 

 those on islands frequented by men, of the woodcock, of 

 the foxes, may be due to the fact that the bolder families 

 have been killed off, and left none but the naturally timid 

 behind, or simply to the individiial experience of older 

 birds being imparted by example to the young so that a 

 new educational tradition has occurred. — The cases of phy- 

 sical refinement, nervous temperament, Yankee type, etc., 

 also need much more discriminating treatment than they 

 have yet received from the Lamarckians. There is no real 

 evidence that physical refinement and nervosity tend to ac- 

 cumulate from generation to generation in aristocratic or 

 intellectual families ; nor is there any that the change in 

 that direction which Europeans transplanted to America 

 undergo is not all completed in the first generation of 

 children bred on our soil. To my mind, the facts all point 

 that way. Similarly the better breathing of the grey- 

 hounds born in Mexico was surely due to a post-natal 

 adaptation of the pups' thorax to the rarer aii. 



Distinct neurotic degeneration may undoubtedly accumu- 

 late from parent to child, and as the parent usually in this 

 case grows worse by his own irregular habits of life, the 

 temptation lies near to ascribe the child's deterioration to 

 this cause. This, again, is a hasty conclusion. For neurotic 



