TRANSFORMISM 241 



ancestors were not quite different, but they differed to 

 some extent. Then there must have been as many 

 permutations of determinants in the ovum from which 

 the fish developed as there were permutations of char- 

 acters in the eighteen milHons of ova produced by it. 

 Does not the hypothesis collapse by its own weight ? 



It could only have been such difficulties as are here 

 suggested that led Weismann to formulate his hytho- 

 thesis of germinal selection. All those eighteen millions 

 of eggs arose from the division of relatively few germ 

 cells. Each of these original cells contained the 

 specific assemblage of determinants, and the elements 

 of the latter are of course the biophors. The biophors, 

 it will be remembered, are either very complex chemical 

 molecules, or aggregates of such. When the germ 

 cells of the germinal epithelium divide to form those 

 cells which are going to become the ova, the biophors 

 must divide and grow to their former size, and again 

 divide— it is really a chemical hypothesis that we are 

 stating, though we have to employ language which 

 seems to do violence to all sound chemical notions ! 

 Now while the biophors were dividing and growing 

 they were " competing " for the food matter which was 

 in the liquid bathing them, and some got less, while 

 others got more than the average quantity. In this 

 way their characters became different, so that the eggs, 

 on the attainment of maturity, became different from 

 each other. Now, apart altogether from the impossi- 

 bility of applying any test as to the objective reality 

 of this hypothesis, it must be rejected, for it confers on 

 bodies which belong to the order of molecules properties 

 which are really those of aggregates of molecules. 

 The typical properties of a gas, for instance, are not 

 the properties of the molecules of which the gas is 

 composed, but are statistical properties exhibited bv 

 Q 



