HOW ACQUIREMENTS ARE INHERITED

But when your son tries to skate or bicycle in his turn, he does not
pick up the accomplishment where you left it, any more than he is born
six feet high with a beard and a tall hat. The set-back that occurred
between your lessons occurs again. The race learns exactly as the
individual learns. Your son relapses, not to the very beginning, but to
a point which no mortal method of measurement can distinguish from the
beginning. Now this is odd; for certain other habits of yours, equally
acquired (to the Evolutionist, of course, all habits are acquired),
equally unconscious, equally automatic, are transmitted without any
perceptible relapse. For instance, the very first act of your son
when he enters the world as a separate individual is to yell with
indignation: that yell which Shakespear thought the most tragic and
piteous of all sounds. In the act of yelling he begins to breathe:
another habit, and not even a necessary one, as the object of breathing
can be achieved in other ways, as by deep sea fishes. He circulates his
blood by pumping it with his heart. He demands a meal, and proceeds at
once to perform the most elaborate chemical operations on the food he
swallows. He manufactures teeth; discards them; and replaces them with
fresh ones. Compared to these habitual feats, walking, standing upright,
and bicycling are the merest trifles; yet it is only by going through
the wanting, trying process that he can stand, walk, or cycle, whereas
in the other and far more difficult and complex habits he not only does
not consciously want nor consciously try, but actually consciously
objects very strongly. Take that early habit of cutting the teeth: would
he do that if he could help it? Take that later habit of decaying and
eliminating himself by death--equally an acquired habit, remember--how