The Roman Catholic process of selection was powerfully encouraged by the Inquisition, which did its utmost to remove all the nobler and better characters.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that other forms of artificial selection in the civilized life of man exercise a very favourable influence. How much this is the case is at once evident in many relations of our advanced civilization, and especially of the improved arrangements of school life and education. And even capital punishment acts beneficially as an artificial process of selection. The abolition of capital punishment is, indeed, still regarded by many as a "liberal measure," and the most absurd reasons for it are given in the name of a false species of "humanity”! And yet capital punishment, for incorrigible and degraded criminals, is not only just, but also a benefit to the better portion of mankind. The same benefit is accomplished by destroying luxuriant weeds, for the prosperity of a wellcultivated garden.

In the same way as by a careful rooting out of weeds, light, air, and ground is gained for good and useful plants, in like manner, by the indiscriminate destruction of all incorrigible criminals, not only would the struggle for life among the better portion of mankind be made easier, but also an advantageous artificial process of selection would be set in practice, since the possibility of transmitting their injurious qualities by inheritance would be taken from those degenerate outcasts.

Against the injurious influence of the various kinds of artificial selection, we fortunately have a salutary counterpoise, in the invincible and much more powerful influence of natural selection, which prevails everywhere. For in

the life of man, as well as in that of animals and plants, this influence is the most important transforming principle, and the strongest lever for progress and amelioration. The result of the struggle for life is that, in the long run, that which is better, because more perfect, conquers that which is weaker and imperfect. In human life, however, this struggle for life will ever become more and more of an intellectual struggle, not a struggle with weapons of murder. The organ which, above all others, in man becomes more perfect by the ennobling influence of natural selection, is the brain. The man with the most perfect understanding, not the man with the best revolver, will in the long run be victorious; he will transmit to his descendants the qualities of the brain which assisted him in the victory. Thus then we may justly hope, in spite of all the efforts of retrograde forces, that the progress of mankind towards freedom, and thus to the utmost perfection, will, by the happy influence of natural selection, become more and more a certainty.

CHAPTER VIII.

TRANSMISSION BY INHERITANCE AND PROPAGATION.

Universality of Inheritance and Transmission by Inheritance.-Special Evidences of the same.-Human Beings with four, six, or seven Fingers and Toes.-Porcupine Men.-Transmission of Diseases, espe cially Diseases of the Mind.-Original Sin.-Hereditary Monarchies.Hereditary Aristocracy.-Hereditary Talents and Mental Qualities.— Material Causes of Transmission by Inheritance.-Connection between Transmission by Inheritance and Propagation.-Spontaneous Generation and Propagation.-Non-sexual or Monogonous Propagation.-Propagation by Self-division. Monera and Amœbæ.-Propagation by the formation of Buds, by the formation of Germ-Buds, by the formation of Germ-Cells.-Sexual or Amphigonous Propagation.-Formation of Hermaphrodites.-Distinction of Sexes, or Gonochorism.-Virginal Breeding, or Parthenogenesis.-Material Transmission of Peculiarities of both Parents to the Child by Sexual Propagation.

THE reader has, in the last chapter, become acquainted with natural selection according to Darwin's theory, as the constructive force of nature which produces the different forms of animal and vegetable species. By natural selection we understand the interaction which takes place in the struggle for life between the transmission by inheritance and the mutability of organisms, between two physiological functions which are innate in all animals and plants, and which may be traced to other processes of lifethe functions of propagation and nutrition. All the dif ferent forms of organisms, which people are usually in

clined to look upon as the products of a creative power, acting for a definite purpose, we, according to the Theory of Selection, can conceive as the necessary productions of natural selection, working without a purpose,—as the unconscious interaction between the two properties of Mutability and Hereditivity. Considering the importance which accordingly belongs to these vital properties of organisms, we must examine them a little more closely, and employ a chapter with the consideration of Transmission by Inheritance.

Strictly speaking, we must distinguish between Hereditivity (Transmissivity) and Inheritance (Transmission). Hereditivity is the power of transmission, the capability of organisms to transfer their peculiarities to their descendants by propagation. Transmission by Inheritance, or Inheritance simply, on the other hand, denotes the exercise of the capability, the actual transmission.

Hereditivity and Transmission by Inheritance are such universal, everyday phenomena, that most people do not heed them, and but few are inclined to reflect upon the operation and import of these phenomena of life. It is generally thought quite natural and self-evident that every organism should produce its like, and that children should more or less resemble their parents. Heredity is usually only taken notice of and discussed in cases relating to some special peculiarity, which appears for the first time in a human individual without having been inherited and then is transmitted to his descendants. It shows itself in a specially striking manner in the case of certain diseases, and in unusual and irregular (monstrous) deviations from the usual formation of the body.

Amongst these cases of the inheritance of monstrous deviations, those are specially interesting which consist in an abnormal increase or decrease of the number five in the fingers or toes of man. It is not unfrequently observed in families through several generations, that individuals have six fingers on each hand, or six toes on each foot. Less frequent is the number of four or seven fingers or toes. The unusual formation arises at first from a single individual who, from unknown causes, is born with an excess of the usual number of fingers and toes, and transmits these, by inheritance, to a portion of his descendants. In one and the same family it has happened that, throughout three, four, or more generations, individuals have possessed six fingers and toes. In a Spanish family there were no less than forty individuals distinguished by this excess. The transmission of the sixth finger or toe is not permanent or enduring in all cases, because six-fingered people always intermarry again with those possessing five fingers. If a six-fingered family were to propagate by pure in-breeding, if six-fingered men were always to marry six-fingered women, this characteristic would become permanent, and a special six-fingered human race would arise. But as six-fingered men usually marry five-fingered women, and vice versa, their descendants for the most part show a very mixed numerical relation, and finally, after the course of some generations, revert again to the normal number of five. Thus, for example, among eight children of a six-fingered father and a five-fingered mother, two children may have on both hands and feet six fingers and toes, four children may have a mixed number, and two children may have the usual number of five on both hands and feet. In a Spanish family, each child except the