PANGENESIS AND MENTAL PAEALLAX 111 



if you say that each cell * diffuses an influence,' that is 

 intelligible ! ! ! 



I wish I could help you anent sexuality the male 

 element affecting the mother plant or animal is your strong 

 point, nothing I suppose can explain that, but what is or is 

 akin to Pangenesis. 



Next morning. After re-reading all this vaporous letter, 

 I shall try to answer your last page in a concrete manner 

 (to adopt the current literary slang). I can neither answer 

 nor explain nor account for any of the facts you put to me, 

 except on the supposition that every mother cell thrown off 

 by the parent and destined to reproduce the kind, must 

 contain within itself and diffuse throughout every cell to 

 which it gives rise any or all the properties of the parent. 



I have put this in another form on a separate piece of 

 paper how does it tally with Pangenesis ? Please postulate 

 Pangenesis as I have my crudity. 



To this Darwin replied on the 28th (see C.D. iii. 81) ; and 

 Hooker wrote again on March 3 : 



Tuesday. 



Your letter has delighted me, and I want to answer it at 

 length, which I shall do from Norwich where I go for two 

 days on Friday. I now quite understand your Pangenesis. 



I wrote all the first part of my letter by fits and starts, 

 and no doubt made a precious muddle. It is all true what 

 you say that the satisfaction which Pan. may give will de- 

 pend on mental constitution, or as I call it, Mental Parallax. 



I never arrived at any such conclusion, nor did I ever in 

 any way shape my thoughts or reason towards it, because it 

 was simply self-evident. What I have always instinctively 

 held and thought and never could help seeing is, that in all 

 cases of descent ' all the properties of the parents are trans- 

 mitted in the one cell ' (a wonder of wonders it always was 

 and is to me) and were diffused to every part of the future 

 offspring my examples being the reproductive power of 

 single cells of most lower orders of plants, of Bryum andro- 

 gynum and many Ferns, and of Malax paludosa on the one 

 hand, and the fertilized cell of all organisms on the other. 



I do not see how any one who ever thought of the matter 

 of descent could escape this conclusion that the properties 



