THE TRANSMISSION OF CULTURE.

A GREAT prophet of science has arisen, in the person of Professor August Weismann, of Freiburg, who has essayed* to prove that what biologists call an "acquired character" is not hereditary. An acquired character is one that is not congenital, but has arisen, no matter how, since the birth of the organism possessing it. Professor Weismann naturally confines himself chiefly to animals and to modifications that take place in their physical structure, and he maintains that wherever such modifications descend to the offspring of such animals they cannot have been acquired by the animals during their lives, but must have previously existed in a latent state in their reproductive germs, and have been handed down from ancestors more or less remote. Mr. Francis Galton had anticipated Weismann in the expression of similar views, but he made them less absolute, and did not insist upon them with so great emphasis. He applied them, too, chiefly to man, and dealt with mental as well as with physical qualities. With the mental qualities of the human race, we are just now exclusively concerned, and we must leave the biologists to settle the question as regards animals and plants.

Weismann could not, of course, wholly ignore mental qualities, and the following passage from his book will serve to show that he does not exempt them from his law. At the same time, it may be taken as a sample of his reasoning and as a sort of text for what is to follow. He says:

"The children of accomplished pianists do not inherit the art of playing the piano; they have to learn it in the same laborious manner as their parents acquired it; they do not inherit anything except that which their parents also possessed when children, viz., manual dexterity and a good ear. . . . The pianist may by practice develop the muscles of his fingers so as to insure the highest dexterity and power; but such an effort would be entirely transient, for it depends upon a modification of local nutrition

*"Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems." Authorized translation (Oxford, 1889).

which would be unable to cause any change in the molecular structure of the germ cells, and could not therefore produce any effect upon the offspring."

It may be observed that this passage contains two very distinct statements, which are confounded by Weismann, and have been generally confounded by writers on heredity. It is perfectly true that "the children of accomplished pianists do not inherit the art of playing the piano." But "the art of playing the piano" is really a form of knowledge, and no one has ever maintained that knowledge can be transmitted. It is necessary to distinguish sharply between knowledge and the capacity for acquiring knowledge. It is this latter only that has been generally believed to be hereditary.

Knowledge is of two kinds, subjective and objective-knowing how and knowing what. The former is the knowledge of handicraft, or art; the latter is the knowledge of facts and their relations, or science. Neither can be acquired except through the senses, and both have to be learned by repetition and memory. It is as absurd to say that a knowledge of piano execution can be inherited as it would be to say that a knowledge of the multiplication-table can be inherited. Both require a prolonged mnemonic drill of the appropriate faculties. To learn to play the piano it is necessary to learn what a piano is, how its keys are arranged, and how its tones are adjusted. It is also usually necessary to acquire the rudiments of European music, to which the piano is adapted, to learn to read written music, and to understand the relations of the musical characters on a sheet of music

to the corresponding keys of the instrument. This does not differ from learning to read print, and certainly no one claims that the ability to read can be inherited. I have dwelt somewhat upon this point, because, simple as it may seem, no one has touched upon it in the prolonged discussion of Weismann's theories, and statements such as this have been allowed to weigh against the transmission of acquired characters. Being so obviously true, they have been supposed to have a peculiar force, when in fact they have no force at all, because they are wholly irrelevant. of

The remainder of the passage quoted is to the point, and in

view of the state of popular opinion on such subjects, would doubtless be generally rejected as contrary to common observation. But we live in an age when popular beliefs are being constantly put to the test of exact science. Mere prevalence of opinion is no longer a legitimate ground for accepting any proposition. The most universal and long-standing dogmas have proved untrue, while the unpopular heresies opposed to them have often been found to correspond much more nearly to the reality. Is the doctrine of the transmissibility of mental aptitudes acquired through education using that word in its widest sense to be relegated to the limbo of exploded beliefs? And is the opposite proposition the true one-that acquired talents cannot be passed on to a future generation?

Such is the problem before us, and its immense importance must be obvious at a glance. Its settlement, supposing that it can be settled, must profoundly influence the action of every class of men who are sincerely working for the good of the race, and the side of this question which each individual espouses cannot but determine his course in everything that he undertakes. The educationalist must be governed by it in all his plans for human culture. The social reformer will be guided by it in all schemes for the improvement of society. Even the statesman and the legislator cannot fail to be affected by it, and will shape the policy of the state in a very different way for a race that is to develop through its own exertions, from the way in which they would shape it for a race that is completely at the mercy of the little-known processes of "natural inheritance."

Nor is the question now, viewed from the standpoint of scientific authority, any longer a one-sided one. in England, aside from Mr. Galton, there are to be counted among the followers of Weismann such eminent scientific specialists as Mr. W. T. Thistleton Dyer, Director of Kew, Prof. E. Ray Lankester, and, so far at least as animals are concerned, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace. Led by such lights as these, perhaps one half of the biologists of England have subscribed, with or without qualification. to the Weismannian doctrine.

So long as the question is confined to the lower forms of life. it must be confessed that the defenders of the transmissibility of

acquired characters are placed at a disadvantage, on account of the difficulty of proving that the facts to which they point are not capable of a different interpretation, and that they may not be equally well explained by the all-embracing law of natural selection. But when the human species is to be treated, the tables are, in a manner, turned. Dr. Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the law of natural selection, has denied from the first that that law applies without qualification to man. His defense, therefore, of Weismann's views constitutes a singular anomaly. But the fact that, in attempting to account for the development of the human faculties, he abandons the scientific method and, in the language of Prof. E. Ray Lankester, "has recourse to a metaphysical assumption," does not invalidate his early claim. That claim was that such development cannot be due to the action of natural selection, since this can operate only where the quality to be developed possesses such a direct advantage in the struggle for existence as to increase the chances of reproduction and to insure the survival of those individuals endowed with it.

So far as the development of brain mass and consequent brain power is concerned, it must be conceded that no "character" could possibly be more directly the subject of natural se lection, since the primal quality of brain is cunning, and this is more important in fitting a creature to survive than any other attribute. It is, therefore, only in the cases of certain derivative faculties that have little or nothing to do with the fitness to survive, many of them rendering man unfit and almost helpless in the struggle for existence, that we find the really strong claims of those who advocate the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired mental qualities, or post-natal increments to faculties already existing. What are these qualities? Dr. Wallace believes them to consist chiefly of the mathematical, the esthetic (sculpture, painting, etc.), and the musical; but he also very properly mentions the power of abstract reasoning, the metaphysical faculty, or talent for abstruse speculation, that which gives rise to wit and humor, and the moral or ethical attributes. Others might be enumerated, such as the talents for scientific observation, for laboratory experimentation, for mechanical invention, and for literary research; and, in general, all the powers of mental appli

cation, abstraction, and attention, of study, and of investigation, by which knowledge has been increased. On the side of art might be added also the faculty of diction, both written and spoken, poetry, oratory, and style in writing.

It is certainly not necessary to explain that these biologically non-advantageous attributes, though highly derivative and without any place in the great scheme of organic development, have become to civilized and enlightened man not only the most advantageous of all his mental possessions, but the chief marks by which he is distinguished from the animal world below him. More than any and all physical distinctions, these constitute him

Yet all derivative faculties do not belong to this class, for that of money-getting, whether in legitimate business ways or by sharp speculation, that of political and social intriguing to better one's condition, and many others, are but so many refined modifications of the primitive animal cunning, calculated to evade the protective institutions of society, and to secure by still greater indirection the personal advantages no longer attainable by brute force or sagacity. These have, therefore, developed through the survival of the fittest, and belong to the normal competitive class characteristic of the lower animals.

It is quite otherwise with those higher intellectual, esthetic, and ethical faculties first enumerated, and this is admitted by Weismann when he says that "predispositions which we call talents cannot have arisen through natural selection, because life is in no way dependent upon their presence." But he denies that they are due to the inheritance of what is gained by individual effort, and asserts with emphasis that "there is absolutely no trustworthy proof that talents have been improved by their ex ercise through the course of a long series of generations." He reminds us that men who have displayed special talents have most commonly been the only persons in their lines who have possessed such; that others are known to have inherited them, not from their parents directly, but from more or less remote ancestors; that quite varied talents have often cropped out in the same family; that highly-gifted men frequently emerge from the masses; and that great events are certain to evolve appropriate leaders of any popular movement. Therefore, he argues,