Art and Science 



we started say, for example, the amoeba. 

 In the case of asexually and sexually pro- 

 duced organisms alike, the offspring must be 

 held to continue the personality of the parent 

 or parents, and hence on the occasion of every 

 fresh development, to be repeating something 

 which in the person of its parent or parents 

 it has done once, and if once, then any num- 

 ber of times, already. 



It is obvious, therefore, that the germ-plasm 

 (or whatever the fancy word for it may be) 

 of any one generation is as physically identical 

 with the germ-plasm of its predecessor as any 

 two things can be. The difference between 

 Professor Weismann and, we will say, Herin- 

 gians consists in the fact that the first main- 

 tains the new germ-plasm when on the point 

 of repeating its developmental processes to 

 take practically no cognisance of anything 

 that has happened to it since the last occasion 

 on which it developed itself ; while the latter 

 maintain that offspring takes much the same 

 kind of account of what has happened to it 

 in the persons of its parents since the last 

 occasion on which it developed itself, as people 

 in ordinary life take of things that happen to 



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