Characters, Hereditary and Acquired. 49 



unripe for profitable discussion —and, a fortiori, for 

 the shedding of clouds of seed in all the directions 

 of " Weismannism." 



Hence, what I desire to be borne in mind through- 

 out the following discussion is, that it will have 

 exclusive reference to the question of fact already 

 stated, without regard to any superjacent theories ; 

 and, still more, that there is a vast distinction 

 between any question touching the degrees in which 

 acquired characters are transmitted to progeny, and 

 the question as to whether they are ever trans- 

 mitted in any degree at all. Now, the latter question, 

 being of much greater importance than the former, 

 is the one which will mainly occupy our attention 

 throughout the rest of this Section. 



We have already seen that before the subject was 

 taken up by Weismann the difference between acquired 

 and congenital characters in respect to transmissibility 

 was generally taken to be one of degree ; not one of 

 kind. It was usually supposed that acquired char- 

 acters, although not so fully and not so certainly 

 inherited as congenital characters, nevertheless were 

 inherited in some lesser degree ; so that if the same 

 acquired character continued to be successively ac- 

 quired in a number of sequent generations, what was 

 at first only a slight tendency to be inherited would 

 become by summation a more and more pronounced 

 tendency, till eventually the acquired character might 

 become as strongly inherited as a congenital one. 

 Or, more precisely, it was supposed that an acquired 

 character, in virtue of such a summation of hereditary 

 influence, would in time become congenital. Now, 

 if this supposition be true, it is evident that more or 



II. E 



