APPENDIX C 203 



germ-cells) whence he sprang. Thus a man's ears, eyes, nose, 

 etc., are inborn characters. They arise because his germ is so 

 constituted that under fit conditions of shelter, nutrition, etc., it 

 tends to proliferate into an organism having those characters. 

 An acquired character, on the other hand, is one which results 

 from the action of the environment on the soma — the systemic 

 or body cells — as distinguished from the germs. Hence all 

 characters produced in the individual by modes of life, by exercise, 

 disease, or accident, are acquirements. To take an example : 

 Suppose the child of a normal man is blind, then the blindness is 

 inborn if due to a defect in the germ whence the child sprang, 

 but acquired if due to disease or accident to the visual structures 

 after they have developed from the germ. The error is often 

 made of supposing that all new characters are acquirements. 

 Thus a supernumerary digit on its first appearance in a family is 

 often spoken of as one. It must, however, be clearly borne in 

 mind that the distinction between the inborn and the acquired is 

 not one between the old and the new ; it is wholly one of origin. 

 Inborn characters originate in the germ-cell ; acquired characters 

 in its descendants, the somatic cells. As a fact, every character 

 acquired or inborn is new to every individual who has it ; thus a 

 man's head is as much a novelty to him personally as a super- 

 numerary digit. Every child differs somewhat from its parent. 

 When a difference is inborn {i.e. when it is due to a germinal 

 peculiarity), it is technically termed a " variation." All acquire- 

 ments, on the other hand, are termed " modifications." It should 

 be noted that a modification (unlike a variation) does not 

 necessarily imply a difference from the parent ; both parent and 

 child may acquire similar modifications. Again, it should be 

 noted that an acquirement, if transmitted, would produce in the 

 offspring, not another acquirement — i.e. modification — but an 

 inborn trait — i.e. variation — since the latter would be due to a 

 change in the germ-plasm. The only case in which the acquire- 

 ment could be transmitted as an acquirement would be when a 

 modification in a mother so affected her foetus, that a similar 

 modification arose in it. In that case the modification, if again 



