Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin — A Reader’s Guide

The Problem of Simulated Inheritance

Ball argues that the apparent inheritance of use and disuse effects may be entirely deceptive, a simulation produced by natural selection. He points out that Darwin himself could not distinguish whether modifications in domestic animals arose from use-inheritance or from selection acting on general variability. The key difficulty, Ball insists, is that selection is inevitable and adaptive, and panmixia (the relaxation of selection) tends to reduce disused parts. To prove use-inheritance, one would need to exclude both natural and artificial selection—an extremely difficult feat. This logical challenge forms the core of Ball's critique: the evidence for use-inheritance is confounded by more powerful evolutionary factors.

The Weakness of Use-Inheritance as a Force

Ball characterizes use-inheritance as normally so weak that it appears helpless when opposed by other evolutionary factors. He offers several examples: natural selection evolves the instincts of ants and termites despite use-inheritance, sexual selection produces the peacock's tail in spite of disuse and natural selection combined, and artificial selection modifies parts regardless of their use. The assistance of use-inheritance seems unnecessary, its opposition ineffective. Ball sharpens this point with a rhetorical question: if use-inheritance is so weak that its effects are undetectable until several generations have passed—during which selection has been at work—how can one distinguish its contribution from that of the major factor? He likens the situation to Voltaire's remark about incantations plus arsenic destroying sheep.

The Search for Clear Evidence

Ball demands normal instances where selection is clearly inadequate to produce the observed change, or where it has scarcely had time to act—such as in the immediate offspring of modified parents. He notes that Darwin admitted there is no good evidence of use-inheritance within a single generation; several generations must be subjected to changed habits for any appreciable result. For Ball, this admission undermines the case: if the alleged effect is so slow and slight, and selection is always operating, then the alleged instances often prove self-conflicting in their details. The essay thus calls for rigorous proof that excludes selection, a standard Ball believes has not been met.

Ball's essay is a tightly reasoned critique that proceeds by logical dissection rather than experimental data. Readers should attend to his recurring emphasis on the difficulty of disentangling causes in evolutionary biology—a difficulty that remains central today. The work is best approached as a philosophical argument about evidence and inference, one that challenges the reader to consider how we know what we claim to know about heredity.

There is in the 1890 essay by W. P. Ball a lovely, stubborn patience, the way it turns Spencer and Darwin over like smooth stones, asking quietly what use and disuse truly leave behind. That same gentle persistence lives in the pages of Elements of Physiophilosophy — Reading Companion, where the world is rendered as one slow, breathing whole. They sit well together, those two, like old friends nodding across a quiet room.