ause they
have been lucky, or provident, or more commonly both. If they would
keep their wealth when they have made it they must exclude luck
thenceforth to the utmost of their power and their children must
follow their example, or they will soon lose their money. The fact
that the weaker go to the wall does not bring about the greater
strength of the stronger; it is the consequence of this last and not
the cause--unless, indeed, it be contended that a knowledge that the
weak go to the wall stimulates the strong to exertions which they
would not otherwise so make, and that these exertions produce
inheritable modifications. Even in this case, however, it would be
the exertions, or use and disuse, that would be the main agents in
the modification. But it is not often that Mr. Wallace thus
backslides. His present position is that acquired (as distinguished
from congenital) modifications are not inherited at all. He does
not indeed put his faith prominently forward and pin himself to it
as plainly as could be wished, but under the heading "The Non-
Heredity of Acquired Characters," he writes as follows on p. 440 of
his recent work in reference to Professor Weismann's Theory of
Heredity:--

"Certain observations on the embryology of the lower animals are
held to afford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they are
too technical to be made clear to ordinary readers. A logical
result of the theory is the impossibility of the transmission of
acquired characters, since the molecular structure of the germ-plasm
is already determined within the embryo; and Weismann holds that
there are no facts which really prove that acquired characters can
be inherited, although their inheritance has, by most writers, been
considered so probable as hardly to stand in need of direct proof.

"We have already seen in the earlier part of this chapter that many
instances of change, imputed to the inheritance of acquired
variations, are really cases of selection."

And the rest of the remarks tend to convey the impression that Mr.
Wallace adopts Professor Weismann's view, but, curiously enough,
though I have gone through Mr. Wallace's book with a special view to
this particular point, I have not been able to find him definitely
committing himself either to the assertion that acquired
modifications never are inherited, or that they sometimes are so.
It is abundantly laid down that Mr. Darwin laid too much stress on
use and disuse, a