given, as he has done on p. 412 of his Darwinism, without betraying
any sign that he has caught its driftlessness--for drift, other than
a desire to hedge, it assuredly has not got. The battle now turns
on the question whether modifications of either structure or
instinct due to use or disuse are ever inherited, or whether they
are not. Can the effects of habit be transmitted to progeny at all?
We know that more usually they are not transmitted to any
perceptible extent, but we believe also that occasionally, and
indeed not infrequently, they are inherited and even intensified.
What are our grounds for this opinion? It will be my object to put
these forward in the following number of the Universal Review.

The Deadlock in Darwinism: Part II {271}

At the close of my article in last month's number of the Universal
Review, I said I would in this month's issue show why the opponents
of Charles-Darwinism believe the effects of habits acquired during
the lifetime of a parent to produce an effect on their subsequent
offspring, in spite of the fact that we can rarely find the effect
in any one generation, or even in several, sufficiently marked to
arrest our attention.

I will now show that offspring can be, and not very infrequently is,
affected by occurrences that have produced a deep impression on the
parent organism--the effect produced on the offspring being such as
leaves no doubt that it is to be connected with the impression
produced on the parent. Having thus established the general
proposition, I will proceed to the more particular one--that habits,
involving use and disuse of special organs, with the modifications
of structure thereby engendered, produce also an effect upon
offspring, which, though seldom perceptible as regards structure in
a single, or even in several generations, is nevertheless capable of
being accumulated in successive generations till it amounts to
specific and generic difference. I have found the first point as
much as I can treat within the limits of this present article, and
will avail myself of the hospitality of the Universal Review next
month to deal with the second.

The proposition which I have to defend is one which no one till
recently would have questioned, and even now those who look most
askance at it do not venture to dispute it unreservedly; they every
now and then admit it as conceivable, and even in some cases
probable; nevertheless they seek to minimize it