ORGAMIC EYOLUTION AS THE RESDLT OF THE IKHERITANCE 



OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS ACCORDING TO THE 



LAWS OF ORGANIC GROWTH. 



By Dr. G. H. THEODORE EIMER. 



Translated by J. T. Cunningham, F.R.S.E. 

 8vo. $3-25- 



" Professor Eimer believes that he has demonstrated, contrary to certain portions 

 of Professor Weissman's argument, that external conditions do modify organisms, 

 and that characters so acquired are veritably inherited. If he is right, then Darwin- 

 ism receives a powerful support, for Darwin did not work out this part of his theory 

 as well as others. But he does not maintain (and this he dwells on) that adaptation 

 to surroundings will explain all phenomena — that it has exclusive dominion. * If 

 this exclusive dominion did belong to it, if everything were adapted, all evolution of 

 the living world would be also excluded; there would be stagnation.' He brings 

 combinations of characters into play. Supposing that when a given animal became 

 adapted in a certain way other less necessary changes occurred in its frame, as, when 

 horns appeared, other parts of the body changed in sympathy. He is fond of an 

 analogy with crystals, which do not only form at the pomt of impact, but when once 

 started branch far and wide in certain lines of direction, changing the whole mass. 

 It would be impossible to follow Professor Eimer through the organic growth of the 

 living world, the influence of adaptation on the formation of species, and the sections 

 or acquired characters, mental faculties acquired and inherited, function as the cause 

 of evolution without and within, and the Law of Organic Form. Readers maybe 

 warned that the earlier sections are the difficult ones, while those that follow contain a 

 very interesting and attractive store of information, anecdote, and running argument 

 applied to animal life. It may merely be said broadly that Eimer represents more 

 nearly the kind of scientific mind that Darwin had than do men like Kblliker, Von 

 Nageli, and Weissman, who call themselves physiologists, and base their arguments 

 on studies with the microscope rather than on wide generalizations on visible facts 

 concerning animals. Professor Eimer is a zoologist rather than a physiologist. To 

 laymen the distinction is fine; but when we discover that one scientist assumes that 

 another must err because that other is a zoologist, for example, w e begin to perceive 

 that the training a man has undergone may plausibly enter into account." — Neiv 

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