WEISMANN'S THEORY OF THE GERMPLASM 37 



This non sequitur in his argument Weismann 

 excuses with the remark that the presence of latent 

 rudiments in special cases ' depends, as I believe, 

 upon special adaptations, and is not primitive, at 

 any rate not in higher animals and plants. Why 

 should Nature, who always manages with economy, 

 indulge in the luxury of always providing all the 

 cells of the body with the whole of the determinants 

 of the germplasm, if a single kind of them is 

 sufficient ? Such an arrangement will presumably 

 have occurred only in cases where it serves definite 

 purposes ' (p. 63, English edition). Here, again, is a 

 rhetorical flourish instead of a proof. 



But the dilemma which we are examining is not 

 yet at an end. Supposing for the moment that we 

 accept the assumption that different character in 

 cells implies different character in their nuclear 

 matter, we have at once a new and important 

 decision to make. Does the nuclear matter in the 

 different cells, that has arisen by division from the 

 nuclear matter of the egg-cell, become unlike by 

 the process of division itself ? or is it only after the 

 division that it becomes different, and in con- 

 sequence of the action of outer forces upon the 

 nuclei ? 



Weismann decides boldly but again without 

 bringing forward proof in favour of the former 

 interpretation. ' For the chromatin,' he remarks, 1 

 ' cannot become different in the cells of the fully 

 formed organism ; the differences in the chromatin 

 controlling the cells must begin with the develop- 



1 English edition, p. 32. 



