When we reflect upon the fact that unimportant acquired
characteristics can be reproduced in offspring, we are apt to forget
that offspring is only a full-sized reproduction of the parent--a
reproduction, moreover, that goes as far as possible into detail. We
are so accustomed to consider family resemblance a matter of course,
that we are sometimes surprised when a child is in some respect
unlike its parent; surely, however, the infinite number of points in
respect of which parents and children resemble one another is a more
reasonable ground for our surprise.

But if the substance of the germ can reproduce characteristics
acquired by the parent during its single life, how much more will it
not be able to reproduce those that were congenital to the parent,
and which have happened through countless generations to the
organised matter of which the germ of to-day is a fragment? We
cannot wonder that action already taken on innumerable past occasions
by organised matter is more deeply impressed upon the recollection of
the germ to which it gives rise than action taken once only during a
single lifetime. {80a}

We must bear in mind that every organised being now in existence
represents the last link of an inconceivably long series of
organisms, which come down in a direct line of descent, and of which
each has inherited a part of the acquired characteristics of its
predecessor. Everything, furthermore, points in the direction of our
believing that at the beginning of this chain there existed an
organism of the very simplest kind, something, in fact, like those
which we call organised germs. The chain of living beings thus
appears to be the magnificent achievement of the reproductive power
of the original organic structure from which they have all descended.