92 A STUDY IN HEREDITY 



scientific observation, utterly free from all prejudice, 

 and possessed of a full knowledge of the conditions 

 of the problem. The statistics hitherto published 

 do not fulfil these requirements. They are the 

 reverse of voluminous, and there is internal evidence 

 the compilers have seldom even heard of the long 

 controversy between the followers of Lamarck and 

 Darwin. 



We must turn for enlightenment to another line 

 of reasoning. A character acquired by the parent, 

 if transmitted, would appear as an inborn character 

 in the child. Thus, to take an illustration we have 

 already used, if a father were blinded by accident, 

 and his child, as a consequence, were born blind, the 

 father's blindness would be acquired, but the child's 

 would be inborn. Inborn traits, as we know, are 

 transmissible to future generations. The increased 

 capacity for enjoying alcohol which indulgence 

 confers is an acquirement. If transmitted, it would 

 appear in the offspring as an inborn trait,' and 

 would tend, as a consequence, to be inherited by 

 succeeding generations also. In other words, nbt 

 only would the son be affected by the drinking of 

 the parent, but future generations as well. It is 

 plain, on this hypothesis (i.e. that parental drinking 

 increases the child's predisposition to drunkenness), 

 that the effects of drinking would accumulate gene- 

 ration after generation — each succeeding genera- 



