156 



NATURE 



{June 14, 1888 



by which the teeming millions of this country shall be 

 able to maintain themselves in a prosperous, decent, and 

 comfortable condition. We cannot find in their unskilled 

 labour a satisfaction of that want. The difficulties are 

 enhanced by the fact that our neighbours in other 

 countries have been sensible of the superiority which 

 skilled education can confer,and have not been slow to take 

 advantage of it. If we will not be left behind in the race, if 

 we desire to find any satisfactory solution for the deepest 

 and the most inscrutable problem of our time,if wewish our 

 complex community and high civilization to be maintained 

 secure from all the dangers which the presence of unfed, 

 unprosperous, untaught millions must bring upon them, 

 we shall do our utmost to give a healthy and a rapid 

 development to the secondary education of the working 

 classes." 



The Times, commenting on the meeting addressed by 

 Lord Salisbury, says: — 



" The Prime Minister spoke of the occasion as marking 

 an era in the development of secondary education. The 

 expression is scarcely too emphatic. Many of those 

 present at the Mansion House have been for years labour- 

 ing for that cause, and often with little confidence that 

 they would ever see the produce of the seed which they 

 sowed. Now, however, the husbandman's hopes rise, for 

 he discerns everywhere lusty shoots flourishing, and he 

 knows that a harvest is at hand. It is no small matter 

 to find Government recognition of the importance of 

 manual or technical education in a Bill which will enable 

 any School Board to promote it. What London has 

 done other cities will do, and here much has been done, 

 and still more is imminent. The Polytechnic and the 

 Beaumont Institutes are admirable pioneers. The pro- 

 jected Institutes for South London will soon, we should 

 hope, be established ; and the Charity Commissioners 

 have promised to grant ,£50,000 in aid of an Institute for 

 the south-west parishes north of the river on condition 

 that the same amount is contributed by the district. What 

 limits are there to the possible benefits from a network of 

 such institutions over London and other great cities? 

 Even if they fail to sharpen the wits of our workers, and to 

 prepare them for their part in that struggle which thi 

 Prime Minister eloquently described as the course of 

 civilization, if the foreign clerk continues to oust our own 

 youth, we may count with certainty on deep and far- 

 extending good from institutions mingling instruction 

 with recreation, uniting many of the good points of clubs 

 and schools, serving to some as ladders for ambition to 

 climb with, to others as refuges from the public-house, and 

 introducing intellectual light into the dark places of our 

 cities. For many a man and woman, especially at the 

 outset of life, narrow means would lose all terror if there 

 were open of an evening an Institute such as was de- 

 scribed yesterday ; and it would be the best palliative 

 of that dull monotony which in some walks of life is 

 more injurious, as it is immensely more common, than 

 downright viciousness." 



For many a day, as our readers know, we have been 

 urging the necessity for the establishment of a proper 

 system of technical instruction. The subject is one of such 

 pressing importance that we have returned to it again and 

 again, seeking to present it in many different aspects ; and 

 Lord Salisbury's speech and the article in the Times may 

 be taken as indications that large classes of the com- 

 munity have at last begun to understand that the nation 

 has no time to lose in setting about a task which ought 

 long ago to have been most seriously undertaken. Even 

 if the question had little direct relation with economic 

 interests, it would be for many reasons desirable to secure 

 for manual training a place among our educational 

 methods. Attention has hitherto been too exclusively 

 devoted in schools to such knowledge as may be derived 

 from books. It is necessary, from the strictly educational 



point of view, that teachers should aim at a wider, more 

 direct, and more practical development of the mental 

 powers of their scholars. But other and even more funda- 

 mental interests are also concerned. The leading nations 

 of the world, our rivals in industry and trade, have 

 already perceived the benefits to be secured from a 

 thorough mastery, on the part both of employers and 

 employed, of the principles of science as applied to agri- 

 cultural and manufacturing processes. The result is that 

 in many of the best markets, where our supremacy as a 

 trading people was formerly unquestioned, we find our- 

 selves at a disadvantage ; and it is certain that unless we 

 place ourselves on a level with our competitors we shall 

 have to pass through some very bitter national experiences. 

 The question is really one of life and death for England. 

 It is a question whether in the near future there are or 

 are not to be sufficient employment and remuneration for 

 the vast and growing masses of her population. 



WEISMANN ON HEREDITY} 



THE fundamental property of all living matter is 

 assimilation and consequent growth ; and repro- 

 duction is merely discontinuous growth. This is most 

 apparent in the Protozoa, where the primitive form of 

 reproduction — division into two parts — is common. Each 

 part exactly resembles the other part, and both the 

 parent. Heredity in them merely means identity of bodily 

 substance, and consequent identity of vital phenomena. 

 In Metazoa there is a sharp distinction between repro- 

 ductive cells and body cells. In many cases it is certain 

 that the reproductive cells of each new organism arise 

 directly from the reproductive cells of the parent. Here 

 there is as manifestly a continuity or identity of the germ- 

 plasma as in the Protozoa. As has already been explained 

 by Prof. Moseley in this paper, Weismann extends this 

 phylogenetic continuity of germ-cell, or at least of germ- 

 plasma — the essential constituent of the germ-cell — to all 

 the Metazoa. 



In the Metazoa, the germ-cells, instead of remaining 

 single, give rise to the vast number of somatic cells which 

 compose the adult structure. The form, arrangement, 

 and succession of these depend on the germ-plasma ; 

 and as there is continuity of this from generation to 

 generation it follows that the structures derived from it 

 are identical in each generation. Obviously this view 

 excludes the possibility of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters. But this inheritance has been proved neither 

 by observation nor by experiment, and it has been im- 

 possible to conceive any satisfactory mechanism by which 

 it could be accomplished. 



Weismann believes that the theory of the inheritance 

 of acquired characters is not required to explain the 

 phenomena of the organic world. In the production of 

 an acquired character two forces are at play, and these 

 forces in relation to the organism may well be called 

 centripetal and centrifugal. The centrifugal forces are 

 ultimately referable to the molecular constitution of the 

 germ-plasma, and are transmitted with the other pro- 

 perties of the germ-plasma from generation to generation. 

 Changes in the centrifugal forces due to that mixing of 

 plasmata which is the object of amphigonic reproduction 

 constantly occur. Adaptation and differentiation result 

 from the action of the environment (centripetal forces) on 

 these continual changes in the possibilities of the organism. 

 Not acquired characters, but the internal possibilities of 

 them, are transmitted : not the results, but the centrifugal 

 causes of them, are transmitted and accumulated by natural 

 selection. An example will make this clear. Giraffes are 

 certainly descended from short-necked forms. According 

 to the old theory, during life their ancestors, by constantly 

 stretching to reach higher and higher branches of the 

 acacias, &c, on which they fed, elongated their necks a 



1 " Ueber die Vererbung," von Dr. August Weismann. (Jena. 1884.) 



