Mr. Darwin did, indeed, follow Buffon and Lamarck in at once turning to animals and plants under domestication in order to bring the plasticity of organic forms more easily home to his readers, but the fact that variations can be transmitted and intensified by selective breeding had been so well established and was so widely known long before Mr. Darwin was born, that he can no more be said to have proved it than Newton can be said to have proved the revolution of the earth on its own axis. Every breeder throughout the world had known it for centuries. I believe even Virgil knew it.
“They have,” continues Professor Ray Lankester, “in reference to breeding, a remarkably tenacious, persistent character, as might be expected from their origin in connection with the reproductive process.”
The variations do not normally “originate in connection with the reproductive process,” though it is during this process that they receive organic expression. They originate mainly, so far as anything originates anywhere, in the life of the parent or parents. Without going so far as to say that no variation can arise in connection with the reproductive system—for, doubtless, striking and successful sports do occasionally so arise—it is more probable that the majority originate earlier. Professor Ray Lankester proceeds:—
“On the other hand, mutilations and other effects of directly transforming agents are rarely, if ever, transmitted.” Professor Ray Lankester ought to know the facts better than to say that the effects of mutilation are rarely, if ever, transmitted. The rule is, that they will not be transmitted unless they have been followed by disease, but that where disease has supervened they not uncommonly descend to offspring. { 234a} I know Brown-Séquard considered it to be the morbid state of the nervous system consequent upon the mutilation that is transmitted, rather than the immediate effects of the mutilation, but this distinction is somewhat finely drawn.
When Professor Ray Lankester talks about the “other effects of directly transforming agents” being rarely transmitted, he should first show us the directly transforming agents. Lamarck, as I have said, knows them not. “It is little short of an absurdity,” he continues, “for people to come forward at this epoch, when evolution is at length accepted solely because of Mr. Darwin’s doctrine, and coolly to propose to replace that doctrine by the old notion so often tried and rejected.”