224 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



the two polar bodies expelled from the ovum shortly 

 before or more usually shortly after fertilisation. I 

 do not know that I understand this. Up till now, 

 germ plasm has been described as so continuous or so 

 stable, that it has threatened to make all the offspring 

 of the same pair identical with each other if the two 

 parental germ plasms are simply added together. But 

 now, wise nature casts away half the qualities or potenti- 

 alities of the germ plasm, when it throws away half the 

 substance, and the dividing line is drawn at random, 

 or at any rate, is never twice the same. Weismann's 

 later view, to which Komanes had thought that he was 

 bound to come and on which Eomanes looks with less 

 disfavour seems to involve the same difficulty. How 

 can cell segmentation divide the germ plasm into differ- 

 ent potentialities, corresponding to differences exhibited 

 later in the different members of the litter or family, if 

 we are to hold to the high stability of germ plasm ? Or 

 how on earth can we reconcile this with the doctrine 

 that amphimixis is the only source of variations? 

 Moreover, are we to understand that germ plasm, 

 "which grows very rapidly," never grows at all, or 

 never segments at all, after birth ? If it did, apparently 

 it would be constantly changing its qualities. It would 

 be highly unstable. 1 



Nature then, according to Weismann, had been 

 playing an immense game of permutations and com- 

 binations, if not since the dawn of life itself, yet ever 

 since the first origin of multicellular organisms, whether 

 plant or animal. All of these become unicellular at 

 the beginning of the embryonic process, when the new 



1 The polar bodies had to serve as the explanation of a second 

 difficulty one of size. It also is mysterious. On it also Weisraann 

 has changed his ground. And by that change also he secures greater 

 approbation from Romanes. 



