faith or confidence, which both creates and
sustains them. Indeed the universe itself is but the creature of faith,
for assuredly we know of no other foundation. There is nothing so
generally and reasonably accepted--not even our own continued
identity--but questions may be raised about it that will shortly prove
unanswerable. We cannot so test every sixpence given us in change as to
be sure that we never take a bad one, and had better sometimes be cheated
than reduce caution to an absurdity. Moreover, we have seen from the
evidence given in my preceding article that the germ-cells issuing from a
parent's body can, and do, respond to profound impressions made on the
somatic-cells. This being so, what impressions are more profound, what
needs engage more assiduous attention than those connected with
self-protection, the procuring of food, and the continuation of the
species? If the mere anxiety connected with an ill-healing wound
inflicted on but one generation is sometimes found to have so impressed
the germ-cells that they hand down its scars to offspring, how much more
shall not anxieties that have directed action of all kinds from birth
till death, not in one generation only but in a longer series of
generations than the mind can realise to itself, modify, and indeed
control, the organisation of every species?

I see Professor S. H. Vines, in the article on Weismann's theory referred
to in my preceding article, says Mr. Darwin "held that it was not the
sudden variations due to altered external conditions which become
permanent, but those slowly produced by what he termed 'the accumulative
action of changed conditions of life.'" Nothing can be more soundly
Lamarckian, and nothing should more conclusively show that, whatever else
Mr. Darwin was, he was not a Charles-Darwinian; but what evidence other
than inferential can from the nature of the case be adduced in support of
this, as I believe, perfectly correct judgment? None know better than
they who clamour for direct evidence that their master was right in
taking the position assigned to him by Professor Vines, that they cannot
reasonably look for it. With us, as with themselves, modification
proceeds very gradually, and it violates our principles as much as their
own to expect visible permanent progress, in any single generation, or
indeed in any number of generations of wild species which we have yet had
time to observe. Occasionally we can find such cases