Weismann's Challenge 89 



And yet in all else that concerns biological science this period 

 was, in very truth, our Golden Age, when the natural history of the 

 earth was explored as never before ; morphology and embryology were 

 exhaustively ransacked ; the physiology of plants and animals began 

 to rival chemistry and physics in precision of method and in the 

 rapidity of its advances ; and the foundations of pathology were laid. 



In contrast with this immense activity elsewhere the neglect 

 which befel the special physiology of Descent, or Genetics as we now 

 call it, is astonishing. This may of course be interpreted as meaning 

 that the favoured studies seemed to promise a quicker return for 

 effort, but it would be more true to say that those who chose these 

 other pursuits did so without making any such comparison ; for the 

 idea that the physiology of Heredity and Variation was a coherent 

 science, offering possibilities of extraordinary discovery, was not 

 present to their minds at all. In a word, the existence of such a 

 science was well nigh forgotten. It is true that in ancillary periodicals, 

 as for example those that treat of entomology or horticulture, or in 

 the writings of the already isolated systematists 1 , observations with 

 this special bearing were from time to time related, but the class of 

 fact on which Darwin built his conceptions of Heredity and Variation 

 was not seen in the highways of biology. It formed no part of the 

 official curriculum of biological students, and found no place among 

 the subjects which their teachers were investigating. 



During this period nevertheless one distinct advance was made, 

 that with which Weismann's name is prominently connected. In 

 Darwin's genetic scheme the hereditary transmission of parental 

 experience and its consequences played a considerable role. Exactly 

 how great that role was supposed to be, he with his habitual caution 

 refrained from specifying, for the sufficient reason that he did not 

 know. Nevertheless much of the process of Evolution, especially 

 that by which organs have become degenerate and rudimentary, was 

 certainly attributed by Darwin to such inheritance, though since 

 belief in the inheritance of acquired characters fell into disrepute, 

 the fact has been a good deal overlooked. The Origin without " use 



1 This isolation of the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It 

 seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the Origin that when the Darwinian 

 view is accepted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they 

 will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true 

 species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless 

 disputes whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species will cease." 

 Origin, 6th edit. (1882), p. 425. True they have ceased to attract the attention of those 

 who lead opinion, but anyone who will turn to the literature of systematics will find that 

 they have not ceased in any other sense. Should there not be something disquieting in the 

 fact that among the workers who come most into contact with specific differences, are 

 to be found the only men who have failed to be persuaded of the unreality of those 

 differences ? 



