252 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



based upon, it is indispensable that we should first make ourselves 

 uctpiainted Nvith the phenomena of heredity in general, and the 

 inseparably associated phenomena of reproduction, so that we may 

 form some sort of tlieoretic conception of the process of inheritance 

 — a picture, necessarily provisional and imperfect, of the mechanism 

 which enables the germ-cell to reproduce the whole organism, and 

 not merely, like other cells, others like itself. We are thus led to 

 an investigation of reproduction and heredity, at the conclusion of 

 which we shall feel justified in returning to the question of the 

 inheritance of acquired characters, in order to give a verdict as to 

 the retention or dismissal of the Lamarckian principle. 



