nsciousness, trusting
to his dodging reflexes to react automatically and promptly enough
to the visual impression produced by a motor bus, and the audible
impression produced by its hooter. But if you allow yourself to defy him
to explain any particular action of yours by Circumstantial Selection,
he should always be able to find some explanation that will fit the case
if only he is ingenious enough and goes far enough to find it. Darwin
found several such explanations in his controversies. Anybody who really
wants to believe that the universe has been produced by Circumstantial
Selection co-operating with a force as inhuman as we conceive magnetism
to be can find a logical excuse for his belief if he tries hard enough.

THREE BLIND MICE

The stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a
comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to
humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and
cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the
Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents
to offspring. Consider, for example, how Weismann set to work on that
subject. An Evolutionist with a live mind would first have dropped the
popular expression 'acquired habits,' because to an Evolutionist there
are no other habits and can be no others, a man being only an amoeba
with acquirements. He would then have considered carefully the process
by which he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that
the habits with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar
process. He would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action
voluntarily attempted until it has become more or less automatic and
involuntary; and it would never have occurred to him that injuries or
accidents coming from external sources against the will of the victim
could possibly establish a habit; that, for instance, a family could
acquire a habit of being killed in railway accidents.

And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand.
He then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
not, as I could have told him beforehand. So wi