54 GERMINAL SELECTION. 



impression is very likely based upon ignorance of the 

 real character of Bonnet's theory. I will not go into 

 further details here, particularly as Whitman, in sev- 

 eral excellently written and finely conceived essays, 

 has recently afforded opportunity for every one to 

 inform himself on the subject. My determinants and 

 groups of determinants have nothing to do with the 

 preformations of Bonnet; in a sense they are the 

 exact opposites of them ; they are simply those living 

 parts of the germ whose presence determines the ap- 

 pearance of a definite organ of a definite character in 



Biologists in that day were concerned with quite different 

 questions from what they are at present, and although now we 

 probably all share the conviction of Wolff that new characters 

 do arise in the course of evolution, yet the acceptance of 

 this view is far from settling the question as to how these 

 new characters are established in the germ-substance for in 

 this substance they certainly must have their foundation. 

 When, therefore, O. Hertwig laments over my regarding 

 evolution and not epigenesis as the correct foundation of the 

 theory of development, his sorrow is almost as naive as is the 

 statement of Bourne that epigenesis is a fact and not a theory 

 ("a statement of morphological fact," Science Progress, April, 

 1894, page 108), or, as is the latter's unconsciousness that 

 facts originally receive their scientific significance from 

 thought, i. e. from their interpretation and combination, and 

 that thought is theory. And when S. Minot, as the leader 

 of the embryologists, carries his zeal to the pitch of issuing 

 a general pronunciamento against me as a corruptor of 

 youth, in which he declares it to be a "scientific duty to 

 protest in the most positive manner against Weismann's the- 

 ory," I wonder greatly that he does not suggest the casting 

 of a general ballot in the matter. (See the Biologisches 

 Centralblatt of August i, 1895.) We see how with these 

 gentlemen the wisdom of the recitation-room regarding the 

 infallibility of epigenesis has grown into a dogma, and who- 

 ever ventures to disturb its foundations must be burnt as a 

 heretic. 



