﻿CHAPTER III. 



Characters as Hereditary and Acquired 

 {continued), 



(A.) 



Indirect Evidence in favour of the Inheritance 

 of Acquired Characters. 



Starting with the evidence in favour of the so- 

 called Lamarckian factors, we have to begin with the 

 Indirect — and this without any special reference to 

 tb i theories, either of Weismann or of others. 



It has already been shown, while setting forth in 

 the preceding chapter the antecedent standing of the 

 issue, that in this respect the prima facie presump- 

 tion is wholly on the side of the transmission, in 

 greater degree or less, of acquired characters. Even 

 Weismann allows that all " appearances " point in 

 this direction, while there is no inductive evidence 

 of the action of natural selection in any one case, 

 either as regards germs or somas, and therefore, 

 a fortiori, of the "all-sufficiency" of this cause 1 . It 

 is true that in some of his earlier essays he has 

 argued that there is no small weight of prima facie 

 evidence in favour of his own views as to the non- 



1 See, especially, his excellent remarks on this point, Contemp. Rev. 

 Sept. 1893. 



