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Nor need the preformationists have greatly feared the reproach, that the parental organism must have been included within the grand-parental, and so on backwards to the first parents in Paradise. For this “Chinese box” encapsulement theory only requires that we should grant the idea of the infinitely little, and that idea is already an integral part of our thinking.
To these modern preformationists are opposed the modern upholders of epigenesis or gradual differentiation, who attempt to elaborate a mechanical theory of development. And with the contrast between these two schools there is necessarily associated the discussion as to the inheritance or non-inheritance of acquired characters.
And within the same group we find the contrasts of believers in monophyletic and believers in polyphyletic evolution, the mechanists and the half-confessed or thoroughgoing vitalists, the preformationists and the believers in epigenesis. Opinions differ even more widely in regard to the rôle of the “struggle for existence” in the production of species.
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