20 Objections to the inherUance of 



it does reproduce the ancestral acquisitions 

 with the less hesitation or variation, the more 

 they have become habitual, secondarily auto- 

 matic or organised. This no doubt implies — 

 primafacie, at least — that acquired characters 

 are inherited. But it implies also — a point 

 too often forgotten — ^that we should not ex- 

 pect any clear manifestation of such heredity 

 till the functions that have led to structures 

 have passed far beyond the initial stage 

 where conscious control is essential to their 

 performance. 



This doctrine of the inheritance of ac- 

 quired characters, enounced, I believe, by 

 Aristotle, accepted alike by Lamarck and 

 Darwin, was only seriously called in question 

 some thirty years ago. But so rapidly has 

 opinion swung roimd, that now the great 

 majority of biologists — and especially of 

 zoologists — reject this hypothesis, as they 



