THE METHOD OF EVOLUTION 15 



deny, that the child of him who does hard manual 

 labour tends to have at birth thicker skin in the 

 palms than the child of him who labours only with 

 his brains. Neo- Darwinians say that a naturally 

 tall man tends to have tall children, but that, no 

 matter how a man is stretched or how he stretches 

 himself, his children will not be the taller in the 

 smallest degree for the stretching ; Lamarckians 

 affirm that they will. Lamarckians maintain that 

 if a blacksmith increases the size of his muscles by 

 labour his children will thereby profit, and have 

 stronger muscles than they would otherwise have 

 had. Neo- Darwinians deny this. Lamarckians 

 affirm that if a man develops his brains by study 

 his children will have better brains for this process. 

 This again Neo- Darwinians deny. Lamarckians 

 maintain that if a man has children, and then, after 

 falling into ill-health, has more children, the latter 

 will be more feeble than the former. This yet 

 again is denied by Neo-Darwinians. 



Examined closely, it will be seen that the two 

 theories are violently opposed. If the Lamarckian 

 doctrine were true, evolution would be determined 

 solely by beneficial agencies, such as good food 

 and proper exercise. Injurious agencies would 

 cause racial degeneration and ultimate extinction. 

 On the other hand, the Neo- Darwinian doctrine 

 attributes evolution entirely to injurious agencies, 



