Social Environment and Moral Progress

by Alfred Russel Wallace

The subject is of special importance here because it involves the question of whether the effects of the environment, including education and training, are in any degree transmitted from the individuals so modified to their progeny—whether they are or are not cumulative. It is, in fact, the much discussed and vitally important problem of the Heredity

of Acquired Characters. The effects of use and disuse, another form of the same general phenomenon, were assumed by Lamarck to be inherited, and a large portion of his theory of evolution rested on this assumption; it seemed so probable, and was apparently supported by so many facts, that Darwin, like most other naturalists at the time, accepted it without any special inquiry, and when he worked out his theory of Pangenesis in order to explain the main facts of heredity, his suppositions were adapted to include such phenomena. Let us then first explain what is meant by the "acquired characters" which it was thought that a true theory of heredity must explain.

As a rule, the great majority of the peculiarities of any species of animal or plant are constantly reproduced in its offspring. The short tail of the wren, the much longer tail of the long-tailed tit, the crest of the crested tit and of innumerable other birds, always when full-grown exhibit the same characters as in their parents. These are said to be innate characters. In rare cases, however, offspring are born which differ materially from their parents, as when a white

blackbird or a six-toed kitten appears, but these are equally innate, and are often strongly inherited. All these are subject to variation, and can therefore be modified by selection, whether natural or artificial, and the effects of such selection in the case of domestic animals is often enormous. Such are the pouters and tumblers among pigeons, the bull-dog and the greyhound, the numerous breeds of poultry, all of which are known to have been produced by artificial selections of favourable variations extending over many centuries; and the characters of these varieties are all strongly inherited.

Characters which are acquired during the life of the individual owing to differences in the use of certain organs or of exposure to light, heat, drought, wind, moisture, etc., are comparatively very slight, and are liable to be so combined with innate characters and with the effects of natural or artificial selection, that it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain, without such careful and long-continued experiments as have not yet been made, whether they are in any degree transmissible from parent to offspring, and therefore cumulative.

Almost every individual case of supposed inheritance of such characters, when carefully examined, has been found to be explicable in other ways; but there is a very large amount of general evidence, demonstrating that even if a certain small amount of such inheritance exists, it can certainly not be a factor of any importance in the process of organic evolution, all the factors of which must be universally present because the process itself is universal. I will therefore here limit myself to a short enumeration of a few of the very numerous cases in which the continued use of an organ does not strengthen or improve it, but often the reverse; and of others in which it cannot be asserted that the action of the environment can have had any part whatever in the continuous change or specialisation of the part or organ. The number, size, form, position, and composition of the teeth of all the mammalia are extremely varied, and throughout the whole class afford the best characters to distinguish family and generic groups; they are therefore of great value in determining the affinities of extinct forms, because the jaws and teeth, especially the latter, are most frequently

preserved. But as the permanent teeth are always fully formed while buried in the jawbones and covered by the gums, it is quite certain that the special adaptation of the teeth of each species to seize, crush, tear, or grind up its particular food cannot possibly have been produced by the act of feeding, the effect of which is almost always to grind away the teeth and render them less serviceable. Such adaptation could not possibly have been produced by use alone, or any other direct action of the environment. Yet, as the adaptation is clear, and often very remarkable, some eminent palæontologists have declared it to be proved that the changes in them were produced by the changes in the environment, and that they constitute very strong evidence of the "inheritance of acquired characters"—a statement unsupported by any direct evidence.

The same objection applies to most of the special organs of sense. The internal organ of hearing is a highly complex series of bones and membranes, protected by the outer ear; but it cannot be even imagined to have been gradually developed by the action of the air waves the

vibrations of which it conveys to the brain.

The eye is a still more striking case, as too much use injures or even destroys it; while specialities of vision, as long or short sight, are undoubtedly innate, and usually persist throughout life.