If No. 1 be answered in the affirmative it is sufficient for the purpose of treating initial variations from the Lamarckian standpoint, for it is hardly conceivable that Nature would neglect so simple and obvious a method of leading upwards and onwards the organisms that inhabit a changing world. It is very clear from what is written on the subject of evolution to-day that a _point d’appui_ in the process is earnestly desired by many workers and that Weismann’s dogma stops the way. A very significant and important remark is made by Professor W. McDougall in his small book on Physiological Psychology, with reference to the inheritance of acquired characters, that it is a “proposition which most biologists at the present time are inclined to deny because they cannot conceive how such transmission can be effected. Nevertheless the rejection of this view leaves us with insuperable difficulties when we attempt to account for the evolution of the nervous system, and there are no established facts with which it is incompatible.”[31] I am aware that in the scheme of observed nature there is evidence of no iron necessity, that the convenience of psychologists should be provided for, and they, like others of us, have to do the best they can with the tools and the materials which exist, and I agree with Professor Thomson in his remark on _Misunderstanding No. 1_, “that our first business is to find out the facts of the case, careless whether it makes our interpretation of the history of life more or less difficult,”[32] but I am persuaded that he will not treat lightly _such_ a statement, from _such_ a source, on _such_ a subject as that I have quoted from Professor McDougall. As to his second statement on the same page “that in the supply of terminal _variations_, whose transmissibility is unquestioned, there is ample raw material for evolution” it is important as an opinion, and no more, and there is in the present connection, an elusiveness about it which prevents one allowing it to pass. It should be noted that stress is laid upon the term “variations” and from the context this means congenital full-blown “characters” such as those that Weismann says are provided in the germ guided by selection. At any rate, initial modifications are not signified by Professor Thomson’s remark. So for _evolution_ of forms of life it is possible the assertion may be true, but apart from distribution of variations, under the process called amphimixis, some starting point is required for the initial and wholly useless stages of many variations. These may or may not become “characters” or adaptive. [31] _Physiological Psychology_, 1911, p. 156. [32] _Op. cit._, p. 179. What the Problems are not.