1 868.] PANGENESIS. 8 1 



with your admirable powers of elucidation, in one of the 

 scientific journals. . . . 



C. Darwin to J. D. Hooker. 



Down, February 28 [1868]. 



My DEAR HOOKER, — I have been deeply interested by 

 your letter, and we had a good laugh over Huxley's remark, 

 which was so deuced clever that you could not recollect it. I 

 cannot quite follow your train of thought, for in the last page 

 you admit all that I wish, having apparently denied all, or 

 thought all mere words in the previous pages of your note ; 

 but it may be my muddle. I see clearly that any satisfaction 

 which Pan may give will depend on the constitution of each 

 man's mind. If you have arrived already at any similar 

 conclusion, the whole will of course appear stale to you. I 

 heard yesterday from Wallace, who says (excuse horrid 

 vanity), " I can hardly tell you how much I admire the 

 chapter on ' Pangenesis.' It is a positive comfort to me to 

 have any feasible explanation of a difficulty that has always 

 been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up till 

 a better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly 

 possible, &c." Now his foregoing [italicised] words express 

 my sentiments exactly and fully : though perhaps I feel 

 the relief extra strongly from having during many years 

 vainly attempted to form some hypothesis. When you or 

 Huxley say that a single cell of a plant, or the stump of an 

 amputated limb, has the " potentiality " of reproducing the 

 whole — or "diffuses an influence," these words give me no 

 positive idea ; — but, when it is said that the cells of a plant, 

 or stump, include atoms derived from every other cell of the 

 whole organism and capable of development, I gain a distinct 

 idea. But this idea would not be worth a rush, if it applied 

 to one case alone ; but it seems to me to apply to all the 

 forms of reproduction — inheritance — metamorphosis — to the 



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