W. P. Ball

“ Does individual improvement transmit itself to descendants independently of personal teaching and example? Have artificially produced changes of structure or habit any inherent tendency to become congenitally transmissible and to be converted in time into fixed traits of constitution or character? Can the philanthropist rely on such a tendency as a hopeful factor in the evolution of mankind?—the only sound and stable basis of a higher and happier state of things being, as he knows or ought to know, the innate and constitutionally-fixed improvement of the race as a whole. ”

“ How then can we rely upon use-inheritance for the improvement of the race? Even if it is not a sheer delusion, it may be more detrimental as a positive evil than it is advantageous as an unnecessary benefit; and as a normal modifying agent it is miserably weak and untrustworthy in comparison with the powerful selective influences by which nature and society continually and inevitably affect the species for good or for evil. ”

“ Why, too, should use-inheritance be so much more powerful in the rabbit than with other animals which are far more easily tamed in the first instance? Wild young rabbits when domesticated "remain unconquerably wild," and, although they may be kept alive, they pine and "rarely come to any good." Yet the animal which acquires least tameness—or apparently, indeed, none at all—inherits most! It appears, in fact, to inherit that which it cannot acquire—a circumstance which indicates the selection of spontaneous variations rather than the inheritance of changed habits. ”

“ Civilization largely sets aside the harsh but ultimately salutary action of the great law of Natural Selection without providing an efficient substitute for preventing degeneracy. The substitute on which moralists and legislators rely—if they think on the matter at all—is the cumulative inheritance of the beneficial effects of education, training, habits, institutions, and so forth—the inheritance, in short, of acquired characters, or of the effects of use and disuse. ”

“ Would this dominant cause of evolution have favoured a tendency to use-inheritance if such had appeared, or would it have discouraged and destroyed it? We have already seen that use-inheritance is unnecessary, since natural selection will be far more effective in bringing [128] about advantageous modifications; and if it can be shown that use-inheritance would often be an evil, it then becomes probable that on the whole natural selection would more strongly discourage and eliminate it as a hostile factor than it might occasionally favour such a tendency as a totally unnecessary aid. ”

“ Why is there not simultaneous variation in teeth and jaws, if disuse is the governing factor? Are we to suppose that the size of the human teeth is maintained by use at the same time that the jaws are being diminished by disuse? ”

“ But there is an almost endless abundance of conspicuous examples of the effects of use and disuse in the individual. How is it that the subsequent inheritance of these effects has not been more satisfactorily observed and investigated? Horse-breeders and others could profit by such a tendency, and one cannot help suspecting that the reason they ignore it must be its practical inefficacy, arising probably from its weakness, its obscurity and uncertainty or its non-existence. ”

“ Why then should not the reduction of equally useless, more wasteful, and perhaps positively dangerous wings be also due to an economy which has become advantageous to bird and reptile alike through the absence of the mammalian rivals whose places they are evidently being modified to fill? The complete loss of the wings in neuter ants and termites can scarcely be due to the inherited effects of disuse; and as natural selection has abolished these wings in spite of the opposition of use-inheritance, it must clearly be fully competent to reduce wings without its aid. ”

“ Spencer must be allowed free play. Open competition, as Darwin teaches, with [156] its survival and multiplication of the fittest, must be allowed to decide the battle of life independently of a foolish benevolence that prefers the elaborate cultivation and multiplication of weeds to the growth of corn and roses. We are trustees for the countless generations of the future. If we are wise we shall trust to the great ruling truths that we assuredly know, rather than to the seductive claims of an alleged factor of evolution for which no satisfactory evidence can be produced. ”

“ Why then may not the ungainly hind-legs have been shortened by human preference independently of the inherited effects of disuse? By relying on apparently favourable instances and neglecting the others it would be easy to arrive at all manner of unsound conclusions. We might thus become convinced that vessels tend to sail northwards, or that a pendulum oscillates more often in one direction than in the other. It must not be forgotten that it would be easy to cite an enormous number of cases which are in direct conflict with the supposed law of use-inheritance. ”

“ In a well-known case, a blind man on gaining his sight by an operation said that "all objects seemed to touch his eyes, as what he felt did his skin"—so little had the universal experience of countless ages impressed itself on his faculties. Under normal healthy conditions use-inheritance is so slow in its action that "several generations" must elapse before it produces any appreciable effect, and then that effect is only precisely what selection might be expected to bring about without its aid. ”

“ As depicted by its defenders, use-inheritance transmits evils far more powerfully and promptly than benefits. It transmits insanity and shattered nerves rather than the healthy brain which preceded the breakdown. It perpetuates, and cumulatively intensifies, a deterioration in the senses of civilized men, but it fails to perpetuate the rank vigour of various plants when too well nourished, or the flourishing condition of various animals when too fat or when tamed. ”

“ The fact that uneducated persons do not enjoy the higher tastes, and the rapidity with which such tastes are acquired or professed, ought to be sufficient proof that modern culture is brought about by far swifter and more potent influences than use-inheritance. Neither would this hypothetical factor of evolution materially aid in explaining the many other rapid changes of habit brought about by education, custom, and the changed conditions of civilization generally. ”

“ MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS. TRUE RELATION OF PARENTS AND OFFSPRING. It is difficult to entirely free ourselves from the flattering and almost universal idea that parents are true originators or creators of copies of themselves. But the main truth, if not the whole truth, is that they are merely the transmitters of types of which they and their offspring are alike more or less similarly moulded resultants. A parent is a trustee. He transmits, not himself and his own modifications, but the stock, the type, the representative elements, of which he is a product and a custodian in one. ”

“ Every discovery, and each step in social and moral evolution, produces its wide-spreading train of consequences. I see no reason why use-inheritance [32] need be credited with any share in the cumulative results of the invention of printing and the steam-engine and gunpowder, or of freedom and security under representative government, or of science and art and the partial emancipation of the mind of man from superstition, or of the innumerable other improvements or changes that take place under modern civilization. ”

“ The cave-crabs which have lost their disused eyes but not the disused eye-stalks appear to illustrate the effects of natural selection rather than of disuse. The loss of the exposed, sensitive, and worse-than-useless eye, would be a decided gain, while the disused eye-stalk, being no particular detriment to the crab, would be but slightly affected by natural selection, though open to the cumulative effects of disuse. ”

“ The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness and weakness, and undermine the rude natural health and spirits of the human animal. Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of labour, preservation of the weak, and many other causes, all help to injure the modern constitution; so that the prospect of cumulative intensification of these evils by the additional influence of use-inheritance is not an encouraging one. ”

“ Transfusion of blood has failed to affect inheritance in the slightest degree. Pangenesis, with its attraction of gemmules from all parts of the body into the germ-cells, and the free circulation of gemmules in the offspring till they hit upon or are attracted by the particular cell or cells, with which alone they can readily unite, seems a less feasible theory and less in conformity with the whole of the facts than an hypothesis of germ-continuity which supposes that the development of the germ-plasm and of the successive self-dividing cells of the body proceeds from within. ”

“ Use-inheritance is normally so weak that it appears to be quite helpless when opposed to any other factor of evolution. Natural selection evolves and maintains the instincts of ants and termites in spite of use-inheritance to a more wonderful degree than it evolves the instincts of almost any other animal with the fullest help of use-inheritance. It develops seldom-used horns or natural armour just as readily as constantly-used hoofs or teeth. Sexual selection evolves elaborate structures like the peacock's tail in spite of disuse and natural selection combined. ”

“ Darwin holds that in some cases selection alone has modified the instincts and dispositions of domesticated animals, but that in most cases selection and the inheritance of acquired habits have concurred in effecting the change. "On the other hand," he says, "habit alone in some cases has sufficed; hardly any animal is more difficult to tame than the young of the wild rabbit; scarcely any animal is tamer than the young of the tame rabbit; but I can hardly suppose that domestic rabbits have often been selected for tameness alone ”

“ Consequently the alleged inheritance of the advantageous effects of use and disuse cannot readily be distinguished from the similarly beneficial effects of natural selection. The indisputable fact that natural selection imitates or simulates the beneficial effects ascribed to use-inheritance may be the chief source and explanation of a belief which may prove to be thoroughly fallacious. ”

“ Human preference, both sexual and social, would tend to eliminate huge jaws and ferocious teeth when these were no longer needed as weapons of war or organs of prehension, &c. We can hardly assume that the lower half of the face is specially exempt from the influence of natural and sexual selection; and the effects of these undoubted factors of evolution must be fully considered before we are entitled to call in the aid of a factor whose existence is questioned. ”

“ Spencer concludes that the concomitant variation requisite for evolution can only be caused by altered degrees of use or disuse. He elaborately argues that the many co-ordinated modifications of parts necessitated by each important [19] alteration in an animal are so complex that they cannot possibly be brought about except by the inherited effect of the use and disuse of the various parts concerned. He holds, for instance, that natural selection is inadequate to effect the numerous concomitant changes necessitated by such developments as that of the long neck of the giraffe. ”

“ But whether we can discover the true explanation or not, inherited mutilations can hardly be accounted for as the result of a general tendency to inherit acquired modifications. How could a factor which seems to be totally inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the normal effects of use and disuse, suddenly become so powerful as to completely overthrow atavism, and its own tendency to transmit the non-mutilated type of one of the parents and of the non-mutilated type presented by the injured parent in earlier life? ”

“ But this increasing difficulty of complex evolution is only overcome by some favourably-varying individuals and species—not by all. And as the difficulty [23] increases we find neglect and decay of the less-needed faculties—as with domesticated animals and civilized men, who lose in one direction while they gain in another. The increasing difficulty of complex evolution by natural selection is no proof whatever of use-inheritance [10] except to those who confound difficulty with impossibility. ”

“ None of this absurdity would arise if it were clearly seen that a parent is only a trustee—that transmission and development are perfectly distinct—that parental modifications are irrelevant to those transmitted to offspring. ”

“ Various animals and plants become sterile when domesticated or supplied with too much nourishment. The native Tasmanians have already become extinct from sterility caused by greatly changed diet and habits. If, as Mr. Spencer teaches, continued culture and brain-work will in time produce lessened fertility or comparative sterility, we may yet have to be careful that intellectual development does not become a species of suicide, and that the culture of the race does not mean its extinction—or at least the extinction of those most susceptible of culture. ”

“ Modern philanthropy—so far at least as it ever studies ultimate results—constantly relies on this ill-founded belief as its justification for ignoring the warnings of those who point out the ultimately disastrous results of a systematic defiance or reversal of the great law of natural selection. ”

“ Natural or artificial selection might easily thicken legs without lengthening them, or shorten wings without eliminating strong heavy bones, but it can hardly be contended that use-inheritance has acted in such conflicting ways. The thickening of the wing-bones has actually more than kept pace with any increase of weight in the skeleton, in spite of the effect of individual disuse and of the alleged cumulative effect of ancestral disuse for hundreds of generations. ”

“ The effects of use and disuse—rightly directed by education in its widest sense—must of course be called in to secure the highly essential but nevertheless superficial, limited, and partly deceptive improvement of individuals and of social manners and methods ”

“ The valuable germs have been used up in the individual, and rendered sterile in the structure of his person. Hence, too, the "strong tendency to deterioration in the transmission of [124] every exceptionally gifted race." Mr. Galton's hypothesis "explains the fact of certain diseases skipping one or more generations," and it "agrees singularly well with many classes of fact;" and it is strongly opposed to the theory of use-inheritance. The elements which are used die almost universally without germ progeny: the germs which are not used are the great source of posterity. ”

“ Does not so striking and abrupt an intensification of its usually insignificant power demand an explanation widely different from that which might account for the extremely slow and slight inheritance of the normal effects of use and disuse? ”

“ If human preference and natural selection caused some of these differences, why are they incompetent to effect changes in the direction of a diminution of the jaw or teeth? And if use and disuse are the sole modifying agents in the case of the human jaw, why should men have any more chin than a gorilla or a dog?
The excessive weight of the West African jaws at the College of Surgeons is partly against Mr. Spencer's contention, unless he assumes that Guinea Negroes use their jaws far more than the Australians, a supposition which seems extremely improbable. ”

“ Wallace, in his Darwinism, answers Mr. Spencer by a collection of facts showing that "variation is the rule," that the range of variation in wild animals and plants is much greater [21] than was supposed, and that "each part varies to a considerable extent independently" of other parts, so that "the materials constantly ready for natural selection to act upon are abundant in quantity and very varied in kind." While co-operative parts would often be more or less correlated, so that they would tend to vary together, coincident variation is not necessary. ”

“ Tomes observes that it is as yet uncertain in what way civilization predisposes to caries. But he shows that caries is caused by the lime salts in the teeth being attacked by acids from decomposing food in crevices, from artificial drink such as cyder, from sugar, from medicine, and from vitiated secretions of the mouth. It is evident that in civilized races natural selection cannot so rigorously insist on sound teeth, sound constitutions, and protective alkaline saliva. ”