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Updated: June 18, 2025
I do not, however, dwell upon these facts now as evidence of a transmitted change of bodily form, or of instinct due to use and disuse or habit; what they prove is that the germ-cells within the parent's body do not stand apart from the other cells of the body so completely as Professor Weismann would have us believe, but that, as Professor Hering, of Prague, has aptly said, they echo with more or less frequency and force to the profounder impressions made upon other cells.
"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion," he continues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we must wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark that, if we admit even occasional communication of changes in the somatic cells to the germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of the wedge, as Mr.
The centre of control is therefore not to be sought in individual cells, whether germ-cells or somatic, but in the organism. And it is the whole organism, one and indivisible, which controls in germ, embryo, and adult, in egg and owl.
As of course only the germ-cells of an adult organism pass on to form later generations, and as their content of chromatin is derived not from the sister organs of the body, but from the original fertilized egg, there is a direct stream of the germ plasm which flows continuously from the germ-cell to germ-cell through succeeding generations.
The isolation and independence of the germ-cells, which Weismann postulates as opposing this, can hardly be as great as he thinks. 2. It is in his view impossible to conceive how these acquired characteristics can in any way reach and affect the germ-cells in such a manner as to reappear in the next generation. 3. All variations can be explained by his own theory without such transmission.
The implication, very strong I think, is that the action of every organ produces on it a reaction which, usually not altering its rate of nutrition, sometimes leaves it with diminished nutrition consequent on diminished action, and at other times increases its nutrition in proportion to its increased action; that while generating a modified consensus of functions and of structures, the activities are at the same time impressing this modified consensus on the sperm-cells and germ-cells whence future individuals are to be produced; and that in ways mostly too small to be identified, but occasionally in more conspicuous ways and in the course of generations, the resulting modifications of one or other kind show themselves.
Difficult to understand or believe in ordinary instances, such consensus-inheritance seems impossible in cases like that of the hive-bee. Can we suppose that the consensus of the activities of the working bee impresses itself on the sperm-cells of the drones and on the germ-cells of the carefully secluded queen?
It is always the product of the germplasm which concerns us, and we are interested in the germ-cells themselves only in relation to their capacity to produce individuals of value to society.
Compare, for example, the integrity, sincerity and absolute refusal either to deceive or be deceived that exists in the germ-cells of any individual, with the instinctive aptitude for lying that is to be observed in the full-grown man. The full-grown man is compacted of lies and shams which are to him as the breath of his nostrils.
Nevertheless, of course, though the particular contention about the size of the family must necessarily be meaningless, unless, as is so very improbable, it should be shown some day that the bearing of children affects the maternal organism in some way so as to cause subsequent children to approximate ever nearer to the type of the race; yet it is quite conceivable, though quite unproved, that the age of the parents involves changes in the body which affect, for good or for evil, either the construction or the general vigour of the germ-cells.
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