66 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



The first part of the Lamarckian proposition — namely, that 

 bodily characters are capable of being modified by use or disuse 

 — is undeniable; but that such purely somatic variations — ^for 

 which the term " modification " is now conveniently employed 

 — are transmissible by heredity is a conclasion based on no 

 scientific fact. 



Were the Lamarckian theory acceptable, it would obviously 

 facilitate the comprehension of a number of phenomena other- 

 wise difficult of explanation. Applied to the domain of social 

 psychology, it would afford an easy solution of various social 

 questions ; and it is curious that certain Socialist writers, such as 

 Professor Ferri, should go out of their way to combat what they 

 term " Weismannism," and to strike a blow for Lamarckism;^ 

 since the latter theory, if true, would afford facile justification 

 of the regime of aristocracy and castes, as we shall see later on. 

 As we are unable to accept the Lamarckian theory, and as 

 Weismann's theory of germinal selection and of ancestral plasms 

 is in direct antagonism to it, and as we propose to apply the 

 latter theory to social phenomena, we think it desirable, in view 



^ E. Ferri, La Sociologie crimindle, p. 387 (Paris, F. Alcan, 1905), 

 It is evident from his remarks on the subject that Professor Ferri has 

 practically no acquaintance either with the doctrine of Weismann or even 

 with Darwinism or Lamarokism. He says, for instance, in a foot-note, 

 that Lamarckism, by its theory of the adaptation of the individual to the 

 surrounding conditions, does away with a serious " lacuna " in the Dar- 

 winian theory of descent ! To say nothing of the fact that the Dar- 

 winian theory of natural selection and of the survival of the fittest by no 

 means excludes adaptation, but rather implies it, and is based on it. Pro- 

 fessor Ferri seems unaware that the very essence of Weismann's doctrine 

 is the necessity of giving the factor of adaptation adequate consideration. 

 Not only is the idea of the " fittest " to be taken as meaning the fittest 

 in relation to certain conditions (consequently as synonymous with the 

 best adapted to those conditions), but those intragerminal variations 

 which arise are only selected according as they tend to a greater or less 

 adequate adaptation of the individual to the environment. The only 

 criterion of the utility of a variation lies in the harmony of that variation 

 with environing conditions. And we shall see that Weismann's concep- 

 tion of amphimixis in particular interprets this as facilitating an ever 

 greater adaptation of the organism to its environment. 



