hat Lamarck taught--that this was "flat Lamarckism," Mr. Wallace
rejoined that it was the survival of the modified individuals that did it
all, not the efforts of the young fish to twist their eyes, and the
transmission to descendants of the effects of those efforts. But this,
as I said in my book, "Evolution, Old and New," {25} is like saying that
horses are swift runners, not by reason of the causes, whatever they
were, that occasioned the direct line of their progenitors to vary
towards ever greater and greater swiftness, but because their more slow-
going uncles and aunts go away. Plain people will prefer to say that the
main cause of any accumulation of favourable modifications consists
rather in that which brings about the initial variations, and in the fact
that these can be inherited at all, than in the fact that the unmodified
individuals were not successful. People do not become rich because the
poor in large numbers go away, but because they have been lucky, or
provident, or more commonly both. If they would keep their wealth when
they have made it they must exclude luck thenceforth to the utmost of
their power, and their children must follow their example, or they will
soon lose their money. The fact that the weaker go to the wall does not
bring about the greater strength of the stronger; it is the consequence
of this last and not the cause--unless, indeed, it be contended that a
knowledge that the weak go to the wall stimulates the strong to exertions
which they would not otherwise so make, and that these exertions produce
inheritable modifications. Even in this case, however, it would be the
exertions, or use and disuse, that would be the main agents in the
modification. But it is not often that Mr. Wallace thus backslides. His
present position is that acquired (as distinguished from congenital)
modifications are not inherited at all. He does not indeed put his faith
prominently forward and pin himself to it as plainly as could be wished,
but under the heading, "The Non-Heredity of Acquired Characters," he
writes as follows on p. 440 of his recent work in reference to Professor
Weismann's Theory of Heredity:--

"Certain observations on the embryology of the lower animals are held to
afford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they are too
technical to be made clear to ordinary readers. A logical result of the
theory is the impossibility of the transmission of acquired characters,
since the