It is a discouraging symptom of the age that such a system should have been so long belauded, and it is a sign of returning intelligence that even he who has been more especially the alter ego of Mr. Darwin should have felt constrained to close the chapter of Charles-Darwinism as a living theory, and relegate it to the important but not very creditable place in history which it must henceforth occupy.  It is astonishing, however, that Mr. Wallace should have quoted the extract from the Origin of Species just given, as he has done on p. 412 of his Darwinism, without betraying any sign that he has caught its driftlessness—­for drift, other than a desire to hedge, it assuredly has not got.  The battle now turns on the question whether modifications of either structure or instinct due to use or disuse are ever inherited, or whether they are not.  Can the effects of habit be transmitted to progeny at all?  We know that more usually they are not transmitted to any perceptible extent, but we believe also that occasionally, and indeed not infrequently, they are inherited and even intensified.  What are our grounds for this opinion?  It will be my object to put these forward in the following number of the Universal Review.

The Deadlock in Darwinism:  Part II {271}

At the close of my article in last month’s number of the Universal Review, I said I would in this month’s issue show why the opponents of Charles-Darwinism believe the effects of habits acquired during the lifetime of a parent to produce an effect on their subsequent offspring, in spite of the fact that we can rarely find the effect in any one generation, or even in several, sufficiently marked to arrest our attention.

I will now show that offspring can be, and not very infrequently is, affected by occurrences that have produced a deep impression on the parent organism—­the effect produced on the offspring being such as leaves no doubt that it is to be connected with the impression produced on the parent.  Having thus established the general proposition, I will proceed to the more particular one—­that habits, involving use and disuse of special organs, with the modifications of structure thereby engendered, produce also an effect upon offspring, which, though seldom perceptible as regards structure in a single, or even in several generations, is nevertheless capable of being accumulated in successive generations till it amounts to specific and generic difference.  I have found the first point as much as I can treat within the limits of this present article, and will avail myself of the hospitality of the Universal Review next month to deal with the second.