He would then have considered carefully the process
by which he himself had acquired his habits. He would have assumed that
the habits with which he was born must have been acquired by a similar
process. He would have known what a habit is: that is, an Action
voluntarily attempted until it has become more or less automatic and
involuntary; and it would never have occurred to him that injuries or
accidents coming from external sources against the will of the victim
could possibly establish a habit; that, for instance, a family could
acquire a habit of being killed in railway accidents.
And yet Weismann began to investigate the point by behaving like the
butcher's wife in the old catch. He got a colony of mice, and cut off
their tails. Then he waited to see whether their children would be born
without tails. They were not, as Butler could have told him beforehand.
He then cut off the children's tails, and waited to see whether the
grandchildren would be born with at least rather short tails. They were
not, as I could have told him beforehand. So with the patience and
industry on which men of science pride themselves, he cut off the
grandchildren's tails too, and waited, full of hope, for the birth of
curtailed great-grandchildren.
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