Are Acquired Habits inherited? 289 



of the race through natural selection is a slow process, it 

 is a very sure one. He contends that the organic stability 

 wrought into the race by natural selection is more per- 

 manently valuable, less at the mercy of merely temporary 

 changes of conditions, than that which is liable to frequent 

 modification through transmission. And he further con- 

 tends that in individual plasticity the organism possesses 

 all that is required to enable it to meet such temporary 

 changes of environment as are likely to occur. Thus both 

 sides claim for their own views certain general organic 

 advantages ; and both are quite clear that had they the 

 ordering of the organic world they would unhesitatingly 

 carry out their own principles for the advantage of the 

 organisms under their control ! 



Now all this is very interesting, and affords con- 

 siderable scope for ingenuity. But it does not touch the 

 question at issue; and this is — not which method is 

 apparently the most advantageous, not which method we 

 should have adopted, had the work of creation been en- 

 trusted to our care, but which has been adopted by nature. 

 For let us suppose that the transmissionist is successful in 

 showing that his method is for the greater advantage of the 

 race, and is that which best furthers organic progress; and 

 let us further suppose him to contend that even on the 

 natural selection principles of his opponents this advan- 

 tageous method would itself be established by the elimina- 

 tion of less advantageous methods. The non-transmissionist 

 will reply, first, that natural selection can only lead to the 

 survival of such variations as are within the range of 

 organic possibility, and the transmission of characters 

 acquired during individual life by, say, brain tissue to the 

 germinal cells, seems to be, as he contends, an organic im- 

 possibility ; and secondly, that the question is after all one 

 of fact. Has natural selection, as a matter of observation, 



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