1890 ON WEISMANN'S THEOKY 229 



Regarding the cessation of selection, the motive 

 that prompted my question to you was not the paltry 

 one of claiming priority in the enunciation of an ex- 

 ceedingly obvious idea. My motive was to assure my- 

 self that this idea is exactly the same as Weismann's 

 Panmixia ; for, although I could see no difference, I 

 thought perhaps he and you did (from absence of 

 allusion to my paper, while priority is acknowledged 

 as regards a later one) ; and, if this were so, I wanted 

 to know where the difference lay. And the reason I 

 wanted to know this was because when my paper 

 was published, and Darwin accepted the idea with 

 enthusiasm, I put it to him in conversation whether 

 this idea might not supersede Lamarckian principles 

 altogether. (By carefully reading between the lines 

 of the paper itself, you will see how r much this 

 question was occupying my mind at the time, though 

 I did not dare to challenge Lamarck's principles in toto 

 without much more full inquiry.) Then it was that 

 Darwin dissuaded me from going on to this point, on 

 the ground that there was abundant evidence of 

 Lamarck's principles apart from use and disuse of 

 structures e.g. instincts and also on the ground of 

 his theory of Pangenesis. Therefore I abandoned the 

 matter, and still retain what may thus be now a pre- 

 judice against exactly the same line of thought as 

 Darwin talked me out of in 1873. Weismann, of 

 course, has greatly elaborated this line of thought ; but 

 what may be called the scientific axis of it (viz. 

 possible non-inheritance of acquired characters) is 

 identical, and all the more metaphysical part of it 

 about the immortality, immutability, &c., of a hypo- 



