trace of mutilation in an almost infinite number of ordinary
cases, and even where the mutilation is repeated for a hundred
generations; and it apparently repairs rather than transmits the
ordinary and oft-repeated losses caused by plucking hair, down and
feathers, and the wear and tear of claws, teeth, hoofs and skin.

It is often mischievous as well as anomalous in its action. Under
civilization with its division of labour, the various functions of mind
and body are very unequally exercised. There is overwork or misuse of
one part and disuse and neglect of others, leading to the partial
breakdown or degeneration of various organs and to general deterioration
of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or
rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body
is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness
and weakness, and undermine the rude natural health and spirits of the
human animal. Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late
hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of labour,
preservation of the weak, and many other causes, all help to injure the
modern constitution; so that the prospect of cumulative intensification
of these evils by the additional influence of use-inheritance is not an
encouraging one. It is true that modern progress and prosperity are
improving the people in various respects by their direct action; but if
use-inheritance has any share in effecting this improvement it must also
transmit increased wants and more luxurious habits, together with such
evils as have already been referred to. As depicted by its defenders,
use-inheritance transmits evils far more powerfully and promptly than
benefits. It transmits insanity and shattered nerves rather than the
healthy brain which preceded the breakdown. It perpetuates, and
cumulatively intensifies, a deterioration in the senses of civilized
men, but it fails to perpetuate the rank vigour of various plants when
too well nourished, or the flourishing condition of various animals when
too fat or when tamed. It already transmits the short-sight caused by so
modern an art as watchmaking, but so fails to transmit the
long-practised art of seeing (as it does of walking and talking) that
vision is worse than useless to a man until he gradually acquires the
necessary but non-transmitted associations of sensation and idea by his
own experience. In a well-known case, a blind