2 Savage Childhood, Dudley Kidd.

3 The above remark as to the jubilee-volume needs to be explained and justified. In it there is an important essay on each of the great provinces of Weismann, Mendel and de Vries, and in each of these the highest living exponent speaks, Professors Weismann, Bateson and de Vries. Bateson expresses admiration for Weismann’s destructive work, but shows plainly that he holds it to have failed in its fundamental purpose. Nevertheless, by a neat tour d’addresse he adopts Weismann’s uncompromising attitude on the inheritance of acquired characters, which happens to agree exceedingly well with his own scheme. He has but one insignificant reference to de Vries on p.95 where he finds help for his doctrine.

Weismann makes no reference to Mendel or de Vries. De Vries makes none to Weismann or Mendel, but without stating it in his essay he is known to be in opposition to Weismann’s dogma on the inheritance of acquired characters. These three eminent biologists would thus seem to have worked on diverging lines. The two first agree heartily, Weismann explicitly and Bateson by implication, as to the forbidden doctrine, “on the ground that it closes the way to deeper insight”—in other words their mutually destructive theories. So it stands thus in the book—Weismann throws over Lamarck, Mendel and de Vries; Bateson throws over Weismann (as again in 1914) and de Vries; de Vries ignores Weismann and Mendel.

Dr. Lock in his book on Variation, Heredity and Evolution, 1906, says that Weismann practically ignores the evidence of Mendelism in heredity, and adds, p.261, “But at the next step the Mendelian parts company with Weismann.”

One cannot avoid noticing, incidentally, that the vast mass of work of the biometricians led by Galton, Weldon and Professor Karl Pearson is conspicuously absent from the book. Prof. J. Arthur Thomson says that there should be no opposition between Mendelian and Galtonian formulÆ, “they are correlated, and ultimately they will be seen in complete harmony as different aspects of the same phenomena. But it is simply muddleheadedness which can find any opposition between a statistical formula applicable to averages of successive generations breeding freely, and a physiological formula applicable to particular sets of cases where parents with contrasted dominant and recessive characters are crossed and their hybrid offspring are inbred.”(a) concerning which see the Preface to Bateson’s Mendel’s Principles of Heredity, 1902, with remarks on some of the Galtonians.

(a) Heredity, p.374.

4 Materials for the Study of Variation, p.5.

5 Op, cit., p.568.

6 Op. cit., p.78.

7 Nature, 1914.

8 Op. cit., Aug. 20th and Aug. 27th, 1914.

9 Nature, 1914.

10 Op. cit., 1914.

11 Op. cit., 1914.

12 Nature, 1914.

13 Darwin and Modern Science.

14 Preface to Germinal Selection, 1895, p. xii.

15 p.38.

16 p.43.

17 p.43.

18 p.38.

19 p.15.

20 p.14.

21 p.18.

22 p.40.

23 p.56.

24 p.11.

25 p.17.

26 Romanes, Examination of Weismannism, p.115.

“It is doubtful if anything better as to Weismann’s theory of heredity can be said to-day than Romanes said in 1893, and inasmuch as these two latter or distinctive postulates are not needed for Weismann’s theory of heredity, while they are both essential to his theory of evolution, I cannot but regret that he should have thus crippled the former by burdening it with the latter. Hence my object throughout has been to display, as sharply as possible, the contrast that is presented between the brass (“iron” preferably) and the clay in the colossal figure which Weismann has constructed. Hence also my emphatic dissent from his theory of evolution does not prevent me from sincerely appreciating the great value which attaches to his theory of heredity. And although I have not hesitated to say that this theory is, in my opinion, incomplete; that it presents not a few manifest inconsistencies, and even logical contradictions; that the facts on which it is founded have always been facts of general knowledge; that in all its main features it was present to the mind of Darwin, and distinctly formulated by Galton; that in so far as it has been constituted the basis of a more general theory of organic evolution it has proved a failure; such considerations in no way diminish my cordial recognition of the services which its distinguished author has rendered to science by his speculations upon these topics. For not only has he been successful in drawing renewed and much more general attention to the important questions touching the transmissibility of acquired characters, the causes of variation, and so on; but even those parts of his system which have proved untenable are not without such value as temporary scaffoldings present in relation to permanent buildings. Therefore, if I have appeared to play the role of a hostile critic, this has been only an expression of my desire to separate what seems to me the grain of good science from the chaff of bad speculation.”

27 p.215.

28 Heredity, 1908, p.240.

29 I prefer to state the above passage rather than that on page179, which is as follows: “The precise question is this: Can a structural change in the body, induced by some change in use or disuse, or by a change in surrounding influence, affect the germ-cells in such a specific or representative way that the offspring will through its inheritance exhibit, even in a slight degree, the modification which the parent acquired?” (Italics in original). The question is very precise and important, but I employ that given above in preference as lending itself better to the line of inquiry followed here.

30 The term “character” derives both from its etymological origin and its application to biology a double-edged quality. This is of great value to the study of Mendelism which can only or mainly work with “unit-characters,” and it also serves the Weismann dogma well. In both cases the term obliterates the conception of initial variation, and while serving the purposes of these two great schools of thought it directs attention away from the early minute and unimportant stages by which many germinal variations may have arisen. If it had been coined for the purpose, which it was not, it would have been a remarkable instance of polemic cunning. It will be evident in the course of this study of initial variation, that the accredited and general use of the term “character” begs the question far too manifestly for the general use of biologists. If it be retained for the neo-Darwinian and Mendelian provinces there is nothing to say against it, but I adopt here with pleasure the alternative term, often used by Professor Thomson, “modification.” This is wide enough to include the more clear-cut “character” so long as one makes it clear that the latter is one of the germinal variations. Further, I hold that his use of the term “transmission” instead of “inheritance” is the more useful for a wide range of phenomena. As far as possible I shall employ the expression “transmission of modifications,” instead of that well-worn but often sophisticated expression “inheritance of acquired characters.” This has been subjected by Sir Archdall Reid and Dr. Dixey, to say nothing of others such as Mr. George Sandeman, to a somewhat bewildering analysis. Thus the former says, “It follows that the so-called “acquirements” are innate and “inherited” in precisely the same manner as the so-called inborn characters.”* Dr. Dixey admits “that all characters are both acquired and innate”** and goes on to say that the accepted meaning of the terms was vague, that it led to confusion, and that it ought to be dropped. For this remark of Dr. Dixey one may be thankful, but of my friend Sir Archdall Reid I would ask what he is doing in this galley?

* Nature, Vol. 77, Jan. 30th, 1908, p.293.

**Nature, Vol. 77, Feb. 1908, p.392.

Sir E. Ray Lankester in a letter in Nature, 21st March, 1912, dissented from the mode of treatment of this point by Sir Archdall Reid and presumably also by Dr. Dixey in the words “It is not, I think, permissible to say that the normal characters which arise in response to normal conditions are with equal fitness to be described as ‘acquired.’” As to what is a normal character and what are normal conditions there may be much reason for difference of opinion, but I have said enough of this discussion to show that the terms “acquired” and “character” would afford a biological Pascal some such food for criticism as did the term “probable” in his Provincial Letters. The less these two terms are employed the less misunderstanding there will be of certain problems.

It has been held that “discussing words is often indescribably tiresome, but it is better than misunderstanding them,” which is most true.

31 Physiological Psychology, 1911, p.156.

32 Op. cit., p.179.

33 With the exception perhaps of the highest of all, for since the publication of Prof. Woods Jones’ Arboreal Man the question “Who is Man?” has received a new answer.

34 My italics.

35 p.74.

36 Op. cit. p.6.

37 p.5.

39 The twin metaphor here chosen for the name of a complex natural process should be cleared a little of a certain obscurity of meaning. A mould is familiar to all in domestic and industrial matters, but there are two sides to the metaphorical conception. A plastic object may be moulded by the hand of man as in his ruder, but more laborious days, or it may be pressed into an artificial mould that he has made by means of his hands and tools. One of these we know in the rude pottery made by prehistoric man and the vessel of the potter described by Jeremiah the prophet. We know also those machine-made moulds, so accurate as to be fitted for the coinage of a nation and able to puzzle a clever coiner who tries to copy them. We know the rough hewing of the stone by the sculptor which follows his moulding of the clay. And in Sacred Writ we read of a double process when the Hebrews not content with their object of worship took the golden ear-rings of their women and Aaron “received them at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf.” But as no conception of a mould in biological matters, which connotes the rigid accuracy of the coiner’s mould, can represent the truth, the rougher and freer meaning of the term is here employed. A similar double meaning is implicit in the metaphor of the sieve, considered as a human utensil. I believe we owe this idea of a sieve to Professor Thomson, but am not sure on this point. But I have not been able to find any definition as to the way in which the sieve of natural selection is held to act. A sieve is of course for sifting substances, and the size of the mesh is adapted by us for the purpose we have in view. We may want a sieve to hold back for us the fit or good and allow the unfit or bad to pass through, for example wheat and chaff, or we may employ it to separate sand for our purposes from fine gravel. The former is of course the most common of the purposes for which a sieve is used. So here the comparison of personal selection with the action of a sieve agrees with this aspect of a sieve, the fit being retained and the unfit allowed to pass through, thus agreeing with that view of Spencer’s of the survival of the fittest which is held by most authorities to be more accurate than Darwin’s Natural Selection.

40 Jevons.

41 British Association of Science 1902. Zoological Section.

42 Darwin and after Darwin, Vol. 1, p.90.

43 The Descent of Man, Chap. VI., p, 151.

44 I may remark that Darwin seems at an earlier date to have made a very curious suggestion in this connection, for Hartmann, in his work on Anthropoid Apes, p.99, quotes him as saying: “We should, however, bear in mind that the attitude of an animal may perhaps be in part determined by the direction of the hair; and not the direction of the hair by the attitude,” a notion so obviously untenable that it does not appear in the second edition of The Descent of Man, 1896.

45 This was written before the publication of Professor Woods-Jones’ book Arboreal Man.

46 Prehistoric Man and His Story, p.60

47 Blinkers ought long ago to have gone the way of bearing-reins for draught horses. If a riding horse does not need them, no more need a draught horse be thus insulted, for very little intelligence and patience on the part of their drivers would have educated their excellent brains into indifference towards startling objects.

48 Descent of Man, p.19.

49 Use-Inheritance. A. & C. Black. Direction of Hair.

50 Knowledge, January, 1903.

51 Direction of Hair in Animals and Man.

52 Op. cit. Use inheritance.

53 Op. cit. Direction of Hair.

54 Use-Inheritance.

55 Direction of Hair in Animals and Man.

56 Direction of Hair, pp.88–93.

57 Contemporary Review, June 1917.

58 Prehistoric Man and His Story. G.F. Scott Elliott, 1916, pp.169, 206.

59 Science, 23rd September, 1904. New York.

60 Jevons, Principles of Science, p.269.

61 E. Ray Lankester. Advancement of Science, p.7.

62 From Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the years 1788, 1789, with introduction by M. Betham Edwards.

63 The Sense of Touch in Mammals and Birds. A. & C. Black, 1907.

64 Sense of Touch in Mammals and Birds.

65 Galton might have referred by way of illustration to an immortal woman in Martin Chuzzlewit, who shall be nameless here.

66 A. Macalister, Palmistry Encycl. Brit., 11th Edition.

67 Text Book of Human Anatomy. A. Macalister, 1889, p.48.

68 Macalister, p.488.

69 Hunterian Lecture on “The Introduction of the Modem Practice of Bone-grafting.” Royal College of Surgeons of England, January, 1918. Reported in the Lancet, February 9th and 16th, 1918.

70 Human Embryology and Morphology.

71 It is not sufficiently noticed by some writers how important is Professor Keith’s teaching as to the maintenance of the arch by muscular action rather than ligamentous union. And it is a very practical matter from my own point of view in connection with the prevention of flat-foot in the young. If indeed the poor deformed feet of the sufferers can only be corrected by attention to the lowly-organised ligaments, and the muscles will not avail, I can but add “God help them!”

72 Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Trans., p.54.

73 Macalister, op. cit., p.62.

74 Embryology.

75 The Human Body.

76 Nature, November 28th, 1907, p.78.

77 Op. cit., p.71. (Italics not in original.)

78 Op. cit., p.73.

79 The Human Body, p.92.

80 Op. cit., p.73

81 SchÄfer’s Text-Book of Physiology.

82 Manual of Human Physiology. Leonard Hill, p.369.

83 Op. cit., p.371.

84 Text Book of Embryology. Vertebrata with the exception of Mammalia. Vol.II., 1919, p.106.

85 Physiological Psychology. W. McDougall, p.156 (1911).

86 Prehistoric Man and His Story, p.92.

87 Schafer, p.922.

88 Op. cit. p.21.

89 Herbert Spencer, Essays, II, 57.