PRACTICAL CONCLUSION 179

question whether acquired characters are or are not in-
herited, underlies right beliefs, not only In Biology and
Psychology, but also in Education, Ethics, and Politics.'*
t€ A grave responsibility rests on biologists In respect
of the general question; since wrong answers lead,
among other effects, to wrong beliefs about social
affairs and to disastrous social actions.''

It cannot be an easy question this, when we find
Spencer on one side and Weismann on the other,
Haeckel on one side and Ray Lankester on the other,
Turner on one side and His on the other. Therefore
while it seems to us that the transmission of
acquired characters as strictly defined is non-proven,
and while there seems to us to be a strong presumption
that they are not transmitted, the scientific position
should remain one of active scepticism—leading on to
experiment.

And If there is little scientific warrant for our being
other than sceptical at present as to the transmission
of acquired characters, this scepticism lends greater
importance than ever, on the one hand, to a good
** nature," to secure which is the business of careful
mating; and, on the other hand, to a good " nurture,"
to secure which for our children is one of our most
obvious duties, the hopefulness of the task resting
upon the fact that, unlike the beasts that perish, man
has a lasting- external heritage, capable of endless
modification for the better, a heritage of ideas and
ideals embodied in prose and verse, in statue and
painting, in Cathedral and University, in tradition
and convention, and above all in society itself.estion which appeared to him of