TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION xix 



environment in the widest sense of the term, cause 

 different sides of the capacities of the cells to be 

 developed, but they retain in a latent form all 

 the capacities of the species. Weismann says that 

 the nuclear divisions are differentiating, and that 

 the microcosms of the germplasm, in accordance 

 with their inherited architecture, gradually liberate 

 different kinds of determinants into the different 

 cells, and that, therefore, the essential cause of the 

 specialisation of the organism was contained from 

 the beginning in the germplasm. 



