THE SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OF MUTILATIONS. 437 



in extremely exceptional cases. Nature does not create complex 

 mechanisms in order to leave them unused : they exist by use and 

 for use. We can readily imagine how complex the apparatus for the 

 transmission of mutilations or acquired characters generally must 

 be, as I have tried to show in another place. The transmission of 

 a scar to the offspring- e. g. presupposes first of all that each me- 

 chanical alteration of the body (sorna) produces an alteration in the 

 germ-cells : this alteration cannot consist in mere differences of 

 nutrition, only affecting- an increased or decreased growth of the 

 cells : it must be of such a kind that the molecular structure of the 

 germ-plasm would be changed. But such a change could not in 

 the least resemble that which occurred at the periphery of the body 

 in the formation of the scar : for there is neither skin nor the pre- 

 formed germ of any of the adult organs in the germ-plasm, but 

 only a uniform molecular structure which, in the course of many 

 thousand stages of transformation, must tend to the formation of a 

 soma including a skin. The change in the germ-plasm which would 

 lead to the transmission of the scar, must therefore be of such a kind 

 as to influence the course of ontogeny in one of its later stages, 

 so that an interruption of the normal formation of skin, and the 

 intercalation of the tissue of the scar, would occur at a certain part 

 of the body. I do not maintain that equally minute changes of the 

 germ-plasm could not occur : on the contrary, individual variation 

 shows us that the germ-plasm contains potentially all the minutest 

 peculiarities of the individual ; but I have in vain tried to under- 

 stand how such minute changes of the germ-plasm in the germ- 

 cells could be caused by the appearance of a scar or some other 

 mutilation of the body. In this respect I think that Blumenbach's 

 condition is nearly fulfilled: he was inclined to declare himself 

 against the transmission of mutilations, but only if it were proved 

 that such transmission was impossible. Although this cannot be 

 strictly proved, it can nevertheless be shown that the apparatus 

 presupposed by such transmission must be so immensely complex, 

 nay! so altogether inconceivable, that we are quite justified in 

 doubting the possibility of its existence as long as there are no facts 

 which prove that it must be present. I therefore do not agree with 

 the recent assertion 1 that Blumenbach's condition cannot be fulfilled 

 to-day, just as it was impossible at the time when it was first 



1 See Brock, ' Biolog. Centralblatt,' Bd. VIII. p. 497, 1888. 



