WEISMAtfN'S THEORY OF THE GERMPLASM 83 



conception. For he says ' that among unicellular 

 organisms there are not individuals separated from 

 each other in the sense of time, but that each living 

 being is separated into parts so far as space is con- 

 sidered, but is continuous with its predecessors and 

 successors, and is, in reality, a single individual 

 from the point of view of time.' Consequently 

 Weismann must take the same view of the germ- 

 cells, which, according to his theory, are immortal 

 in the same way as unicellular organisms, and, in the 

 same sense, he must make a single individual of all 

 the germ cells arising from a single germ cell, and, 

 with them, of ail the organisms developed out of 

 them. Adam is immortal quite as much as uni- 

 cellular organisms, for he survives in his successors. 



In brief, \Yeismann assigns immortality not to 

 the unicellular individual, but to the sum of all the 

 individuals arising from it, all the individuals of 

 the same species, living contemporaneously and 

 successively in fact, to the conception of a species, 



In my view, what Weismann has tried to express 

 by the word ' immortality ' is no more than the 

 continuity of the process of development. So he 

 himself says in the course of a defence in which, 

 however, he did not intend to give up the stand- 

 point he had taken ; he wishes to imply, by the 

 immortality of unicellular organisms, only ' the 

 deathless transformation of organic material,' or ' a 



O ' 



transformation of organic material that always 

 comes back to its original form again.' 



Thus, Weismann himself really has implied that 

 his distinction between immortal unicellular organ- 



o 



