12 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



were parental acquirements the sole causes of 

 variations in the offspring, the puppies would, from 

 the nature of the case, be all exactly alike, for they 

 would all inherit the same acquirements. It is 

 clear, therefore, that offspring may be superior or 

 inferior to their parents, as regards any particular, 

 from causes other than the transmission of acquire- 

 ments. On that indubitable fact Darwin founded 

 his theory of evolution. 



Darwin accepted Lamarck's theory so far as it 

 went. He agreed that acquirements were trans- 

 missible, and, therefore, a cause of evolution. But 

 he thought that variations produced otherwise than 

 by the transmission of acquirements — accidental 

 variations as in our present ignorance we may call 

 them — were also causes of evolution. He thought 

 that Nature, like the breeder, selected to con- 

 tinue the race individuals who were " accidentally " 

 superior, while she eliminated the "accidentally" 

 inferior. The world has progressed since 

 Darwin's day. A new school has arisen which 

 out-Herods Herod. His modern followers, the 

 Neo-Darwinians, declare that Darwin, with charac- 

 teristic modesty, underrated his own great discovery. 

 They insist that Lamarck was wholly wrong, that 

 acquired characters are never transmitted, and that 

 therefore Darwin's theory, instead of only partially 

 explaining the facts of evolution, wholly explains 



