36. _The Transmission to Offspring of Acquired Qualities_
The cruel fate of Dom Carlos of Portugal naturally enough produced philosophic and thoughtful articles in some of the journals of the day. An able writer told his readers that the “kingly caste” has characteristics peculiar to itself, “which illustrate the Darwinian law.” He does not say what Darwinian law, and I am afraid he would find it difficult to do so. He says that people who for centuries have had their own way (how many kingly families have done so?), who have always lived on good food and never tasted bad wine, and have constantly conversed with interesting people (not usually the chance of princes!) must certainly, if subject to “the laws which govern animal and plant life,” produce well-marked characteristics in their offspring--and he goes on to speak of a fine appetite for food (what he describes is really a morbid condition connected with indigestion) as indigenous to Royalty, and declares that the gift of recognising faces and remembering names is “a faculty cultivated by generations of practice.”
One must recognise with satisfaction the desire to explain the facts and varieties of human life and character by reference to “the laws which govern animal and plant life.” It is by faithfully and truly carrying out the inquiries suggested by that desire that the knowledge which is the sole and absolutely essential condition for the safe conduct of human life and the increased happiness of human communities, can be obtained, and by such inquiries only; and, further, only upon the condition that the investigation is conducted in the true scientific spirit with accuracy and without prejudice. The remarks upon the kingly caste which I have quoted above show with what “legerity and temerity” a clever and respected writer will formulate phrases and conclusions which are, in face of what Darwin and his successors have demonstrated, absurdly erroneous, in fact, topsy-turvy as compared with the reality.
The main doctrine which Darwin and his followers have established is that neither castes nor families of higher or lower living things, including man, acquire any new characteristics by exposure to special circumstances or by consuming finer or coarser food, which can or do become innate or fixed in the race. The individual may be improved or depraved, enlarged or enfeebled, by the conditions of his individual life, but he cannot transmit the qualities--the improvement, the depravity, the enlargement, or the dwindling--which have been thus attained by him to his offspring. The race cannot be changed in this way. All the parents can transmit is the quality which they themselves have inherited of resisting or of collapsing, of becoming enfeebled, or of showing strength and vigour, under certain given conditions. The characteristics of Royalty are not characteristics brought about by the Royal state, any more than the characteristics of English race-horses are brought about by the racing state or by life in a breeder’s stable. The characteristics of Royalty are like those of other living things, the characteristics of a certain family or blend of families or strains. Whatever characteristics distinct Royal families have in common with one another are not due to the existence of a natural law in virtue of which the occupations and opportunities of the Royal state produce “faculties” or “characteristics” in the “blood” or “stock.” Such similarity of characteristics is due either to the similarity of the demands and conditions of Court life in all parts of Europe, acting as an educating force on the individual, or to the intermarrying and consequent blending of family characteristics among a large proportion of the Royal Houses at present existing.