The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-03-03
THE QUESTION of HEREDITY.
Scientists Unable to Decide Upon the
Limits of Inherited Traits.


Philadelphia Record.
Herbert Spencer's new attack upon
Professor Weismann, Of Frefburg, has
given fresh vogue to that never-weary-
ing problem of biologists, heredity. Prob
ably no other question has played so
famous a part in the history of the hui
man race. 1t has passed through three
stages-the social, which gave birth to
totemism, hierarchy, nation, caste
and aristocracy; the practical, which
ers, and the scientific, which is
now the battlefield of biology. The
highest response that man looks for IS
the hard-sought answer to the interroga-
tory: Can acquired character be inner
tied? Can we by any means of self-cul-
ture, however continuous and persever-
ing add to the stature, moral or ma
terial. of our offspring and descend
ants?" To this query Professor Wels-
mann emphatically and dogElatically
replies NO
The acceptance of any such dictum is
repudiated in the name of all the hopes
and aspirations of humanity. In its
bald reduction the Weismann1an doc
trine means simply that parents cannot
by any mental or moral efforts endow
their children with congenital traits. The
son cannot, in other words, begin In ma
ture where the father left off. The scion
NAV inherit his sire's books, instruments
and conditions, but not his individually
acquired character. Certainly it will not
do merely to oppose this conclusion by
the glittering generality that family
traits are proverbial Ancestral tend1n-
cies are not always revealed: and the
fact is that pride of family is one of the
least reliable of modern social pigments.
The ground upon which st. George
NIvart, the noted Catholic botanlst and
biologist seeks scientifically to refute
the Weismannian doctrine may be popu-
larly stated in a brief epitome. Weis-
mann asserted that no acquired charac-
tiers can by any possibility be
transmitted to offspring; consequent
ly all variations of species are due
to natural selection which means
an improved type due to better
sexual combination. He believes
that the original vital principle, which
in its material form he terms the germ
plasm, is alone transmitted from both
parents. st. George Mivart declai es, on
the contrary, that no such peculiar diff
ferentiations would have been brought
about by simple ancestral origin as the
queer tadpole stages of frog and toad,
the gill-breathing epoch of efts, or the
sex changes of bees in the egg. Natural
selection does not account for the rudf-
mentary first finger on the potto, the
small African lemuroid animal, nor the
the labyrinthodons of the carboniferous
rocks, the teeth of which were most
beautifully complicated for no seeming
purpose whatever.
But the Mivartian argument does not
simply casts doubt upon the over-em-
phasized Darwinian theory of natural
selection The scientific question over
shadows the philosophic problem alto
gether too much. The inquiry, as it
chiefly affects human morals, is whether
or no man can transmit inherited intelli-
gence. Despite the fact that man has
developed new functions, has he devel-
oped new trait? The old traits may be
wonderfully blossomed into new growth,
and may be upon the morn of a nobler
fruitage; but has mankind to-day one
single addition to its brain?
Was Shakespeare any greater in him
self than Aeschylus, Darwin than Aris-
totle, or Hegel than Plato? Where is
our Michael Angelo or Paolo Sarpi? Are
the ba bes now in their cradles any wiser
than the little Alcibiades? Are boys any
less barbarians than they were in the
year one? The fact seems to be that,
like human bees in the hive of the CEN
turtles men have toiled at laying up the
honey of wisdom. But each newcomer
must feed for himself. The sons do not
inherit new traits from their fathers:
and yet they enter into the legacy of
the old traits. Human nature remains
the same in kind. but, nevertheless, it
changes in degree