Essays on Life 



effects of disuse." The "gravest possible 

 doubt" should mean that Mr. Romanes re- 

 gards it as a moral certainty that disuse has 

 no transmitted effect in reducing an organ, 

 and it should follow that he holds use to have 

 no transmitted effect in its development. The 

 sequel, however, makes me uncertain how 

 far Mr. Romanes intends this, and I would 

 refer the reader to the article which Mr. 

 Romanes has just published on Weismann 

 in the Contemporary Review for this current 

 month. 



The burden of Mr. Thiselton Dyer's con- 

 troversy with the Duke of Argyll (see Nature, 

 January 16, 1890, et seq.) was that there was 

 no evidence in support of the transmission of 

 any acquired modification. The orthodoxy of 

 science, therefore, must be held as giving at 

 any rate a provisional support to Professor 

 Weismann, but all of them, including even 

 Professor Weismann himself, shrink from 

 committing themselves to the opinion that 

 the germ-cells of any organisms remain in all 

 cases unaffected by the events that occur to 



the other cells of the same organism, and until 



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