suppose, or else that acquirements can be assimilated
and stored as congenital qualifications in a shorter time than we think;
so that, as between Lyell and Archbishop Ussher, the laugh may not be
with Lyell quite so uproariously as it seemed fifty years ago.

HEREDITY AN OLD STORY

It is evident that the evolutionary process is a hereditary one, or,
to put it less drily, that human life is continuous and immortal. The
Evolutionists took heredity for granted. So did everybody. The human
mind has been soaked in heredity as long back as we can trace its
thought. Hereditary peers, hereditary monarchs, hereditary castes and
trades and classes were the best known of social institutions, and in
some cases of public nuisances. Pedigree men counted pedigree dogs and
pedigree horses among their most cherished possessions. Far from being
unconscious of heredity, or sceptical, men were insanely credulous about
it: they not only believed in the transmission of qualities and habits
from generation to generation, but expected the son to begin mentally
where the father left off.

This belief in heredity led naturally to the practice of Intentional
Selection. Good blood and breeding were eagerly sought after in human
marriage. In dealing with plants and animals, selection with a view to
the production of new varieties and the improvement and modification of
species had been practised ever since men began to cultivate them. My
pre-Darwinian uncle knew as well as Darwin that the race-horse and the
dray-horse are not separate creations from the Garden of Eden, but
adaptations by deliberate human selection of the medieval war-horse to
modern racing and industrial haulage. He knew that there are nearly
two hundred different sorts of dogs, all capable of breeding with one
another and of producing cross varieties unknown to Adam. He knew that
the same thing is true of pigeons. He knew that gardeners had spent
their lives trying to breed black tulips and green carnations and
unheard-of orchids, and had actually produced flowers just as strange
to Eve. His quarrel with the Evolutionists was not a quarrel with the
evidence for Evolution: he had accepted enough of it to prove Evolution
ten times over before he ever heard of it. What he repudiated was
cousinship with the ape, and the implied suspicion of a rudimentary
tail, because it was offensive to his sense of his own dignity, and
because he thought that apes were ridiculous, and tails dia