420 E inter on Growth and Inheritance 



entirely mortal, and endowed, by death, with greater health 

 and vigour. Those conservative ' immortals ' who were sa 

 unreasonable as to decline the acquisition of a natural death 

 were forced, by degrees, to succumb to a violent one. 



But the most distinctive characteristic of Weismann's 

 teaching is his absolute denial that any acquired characters 

 can be inherited. No skill of hand, no activity of brain, 

 which has been acquired through use and wont, can ever 

 pass from sire to son. We may do much to educate the boy, 

 but when he has grown a man, his oifspring will have to 

 begin de novo as entirely as if their parent had never opened 

 a book or learned a line by heart. 



Yet it is notorious that parental and ancestral characters 

 are transmitted. How is this ? He tells us it is due to tha 

 fact that every creature which consists of more than one cell 

 has a body made up of two parts : one constituting the bulk 

 of the body (called by him the ' soma ') ; the other a minute 

 portion of matter termed by him ' germ-plasm,' and supposed 

 to retain the immortality which once belonged to the- 

 unicellular ancestor. Thus we each and all bear within us 

 an immortal part, living in eternal unconsciousness, and 

 unconsciously served by fool and philosopher, peer and 

 peasant, none of whom dreams that such service is, as it is 

 according to Weismann, his being's one real end and aim. 



But seeing that, in addition to our parents, we all have 

 an unimaginable quantity of ancestors, how are we to ex- 

 plain the fact that only the characteristics of a very few of 

 them seem to be transmitted ? This he explains by a most 

 amusing piece of pure and gratuitous assumption. 



The eggs of most animals successively expel from their 

 substance two particles, known as the first and second ' polar 

 bodies.' These he finds, in the depth of his OAvn conscious- 

 ness, to be of quite different natures. The first, he tells us^ 

 is superfluous material, fit for building up the ^^^ itself. 



