Characters, Hereditary and Acquired. 151 



of statement or of reasoning, it is for the ultra- 

 Darwinians to correct them ; but it may be well to 

 remark beforehand, that any criticism of a merely 

 general kind touching the comparative paucity of the 

 facts thus adduced in favour of Lamarckian doctrine, 

 will not stand as a valid criticism. For, as we 

 have seen in the opening part of the discussion, 

 even if use-inheritance and direct action of the 

 environment have been of high importance as factors 

 of organic evolution, it must be in almost all cases 

 impossible to dissociate their influence from that 

 of natural selection — at any rate where plants and 

 animals in a state of nature are concerned. On 

 the other hand, experiments expressly devised to 

 test the question have not hitherto been carried 

 out. Besides, the facts and arguments here adduced 

 are but comparatively few. For, unless it can be 

 shown that what has been said of reflex action, 

 instinct, so-called " self-adaptation " in plants, &c., is 

 wrong in principle, the facts which tell in favour 

 of Lamarckian theory are absolutely very numerous. 

 Only when considered in relation to cases where 

 we are unable to exclude the conceivable possi- 

 bility of natural selection having been at work, can 

 it be said that the facts in question are not 

 numerous. 



Comparatively few, then, though the facts may 

 be of which I have given some examples, in my 

 opinion they are amply sufficient for the purpose 

 in hand. This purpose is to show that the question 

 which we are now considering is very far from 

 being a closed question ; and, therefore, that the 

 school of Weismann is much too precipitate in 



