402 HISTORY OF THEORIES 



Every one allows that the concrete expressions of the prefor- 

 mationist doctrine were crude and false. No microscope, how- 

 ever powerful, will show a miniature model of the future organism 

 lying within either egg or sperm. But, as Huxley pointed out, 

 the preformationists were obviously right in insisting that the 

 future organism must indeed be materially implicit within 

 the germ ; and they were also right in supposing that the germ 

 involved the rudiment not only of the organism into which it 

 grew, but of the next generation as well. But the preformation- 

 ists themselves had not and could not have any understanding 

 of the two elements of truth which we can now read into their 

 theories, and which are at present expressed in modern rehabili- 

 tations, (i) in the " evolutionist " conception of inheritance and 

 development, and (ii) in the conception of germinal continuity. 

 It is a mistake to think that either of these is in any direct 

 way affiliated to the preformationist doctrine. 



The preformationists stocked the germ with some sort of 

 preformed model, quite unverifiable as they thought of it, and 

 thus made development easy by reducing it to mere unfolding ; 

 but they could not account for the preformation. 



Yet their antagonists were equally unsatisfactory, for as one 

 of the most scholarly of embryologists. Prof. C. 0. Whitman, 

 has said, " Aristotle, Harvey, Wolff, and Blumenbach all tra- 

 versed the same problem, and landed in the same pitfall. They 

 all faced the question of preformation, and discovering no natural 

 way by which the germ could come ready-made, they insisted 

 that the germ must start anew every time and from the pit of 

 material homogeneity, acquiring everything under the guidance 

 of hyperphysical agencies, assisted by the accident of external 

 conditions." 



It was, indeed, a deadlock until concrete investigation dis- 

 closed the origin of the germ-cells with their heritage of organi- 

 sation, until the actual nature of the genetic linkage between 

 successive generations was disclosed. 



