Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/191

Rh be at least doubtful. There have been very serious and learned controversies respecting the possibility of the transmission by generation of acquired advantages. Weissmann decides the question in the negative. Only aptitudes are transmitted by descent. The discussion appears to be, to some extent, an affair of words. Some say pointer-dogs have been formed by hunters, who taught particular individuals not to chase after game, but only to signalize its presence, and that the knowledge of the fathers passed to their posterity. Others reply that this is not the case; even in the times of the corporations or trade-guilds the sons of shoemakers were not born shoemakers. Special aptitudes, manifested by particular individuals, have been turned to the best advantage; they have been cultivated, and thus breeds have been created by selection. I say that this is a question of words, because in any case the re-enforcement of the aptitude is something acquired, and this acquisition, it is admitted, passes to descendants.

Let us suppose, then, that we have created a race of calculating dogs. We might, by a bold but legitimate generalization, infer from that that all animals would be susceptible of acquiring abstract notions or of thinking by symbols. But the dog would have had an educator. Must man, then, also have had his educator? We see, thus, how this question would take shape, and it certainly would be no less grave or less perplexing than the alternative.

Again, let us suppose that the attempts utterly fail. We might, indeed, contend that the check was only a temporary one. But let us waive the evasion, and reason as though the dog were radically incapable of representing his thoughts by symbols. Would not absolute transformism, that is, the applicability of transformism to man, receive a mortal blow? I do not believe it. The only really legitimate conclusion would be, that not all species are indefinitely perfectible, but that only a few species, perhaps only one, have really entered upon the road to infinite progress, while the others have gone into a kind of blind alley. It is in the same way that the main stem of a tree may theoretically grow up indefinitely toward the sky, while the development of the lateral branches is necessarily limited by the power of the wood to resist rupture.

We thus see that this problem is one of an exceedingly interesting and tempting character. Although Malebranche has no partisans now, those who agree to some extent with Schwann form legions, and in their eyes transformism has only the value of a general doctrine. It is the question of the origin of man and his place in the world, which is raised by Sir John Lubbock's cards, and on which, with the co-operation of his dog Van, he has contributed to throw a little light. Anthropology also can only follow his experiments, the abortive ones as well as the successful ones, with legitimate curiosity, and return its most earnest thanks for them.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.