A DEBT TO WEISMANN xxxvii 



individuals of various degrees of strength, is in truth 

 operating upon the stronger and weaker germs.' l I 

 fully admit the importance of Mendel's discovery in 

 increasing our knowledge of the constitution and relation- 

 ships of germ-cells, but this by no means justifies the 

 appropriation under his name of results which the present 

 generation owes to Weismann. 2 



1 Assays upon Heredity, Oxford, 2nd ed., 1891, vol. i, p. 85. The 

 same thought is expressed in Weismann's term ' blastogenic '. It also 

 appears in the following sentence (1. c, p. 84) : — 'The perfection of form of 

 an organ does not however depend upon the amount of exercise under- 

 gone by it during the life of the organism, but primarily and principally 

 upon the fact that the germ from which the individual arose was predis- 

 posed to produce a perfect organ.' The very same idea was published by 

 J. C. Prichard in 1826, as may be seen on p. 183 of the present work, 

 where these words occur: — ' . . . whatever varieties are produced in the 

 race, have their beginning in the original structure of some particular 

 ovum or germ, . . .' 



2 An example of the respect with which Bateson treats this great dis- 

 coverer is to be found on p. 573 of his work, On Variation. Without in 

 any way meeting the difficulty which Weismann attempted to face, 

 without any discussion of Weismann's hypothesis, Bateson simply waves 

 the solution aside, concluding in these words : — ' We may doubt indeed 

 whether the ideas associated with that flower of speech, " Panmixia," are 

 not as false to the laws of life as the word to the laws of language.' It 

 would be interesting to know something of the height of linguistic attain- 

 ment from which Bateson pours his scorn on a far greater and much older 

 man than himself. The unscholarly use of the ' behold ' of Genesis in 

 the passage I have quoted on p. xxii throws some light on Bateson's 

 capacity as a critic ; but however necessary it may be for him to borrow 

 the information, he can always supply the scorn. 



The absorption of the results of other workers in part explains, and 

 is in part the outcome of, the extraordinarily exaggerated importance 

 which is attached to the extremely interesting and valuable work of 

 Mendel. The following statement was made by Bateson in 1 904 : — 'It will 

 aid appreciation of the change coming over evolutionary science if it be 

 realised that the new knowledge of heredity and variation rather replaces 

 than extends current ideas on those subjects ' (Report British Association, 

 1904, p. 574). R. H. Lock (I.e., p. 265) also uses these words: — 

 ' There can be no sort of doubt that Mendel's brief paper is the most 



