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.
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