184 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



is to put aside a powerful weapon of analysis, and there 

 are, or so it seems to me, reasons for believing that some 

 purely theoretic criticisms of the germ-plasm hypothesis 

 may help to show where it is true and where false. In 

 any case the orthodox can hardly complain of the use of 

 theory since Weismannism, however its characteristics 

 have been altered and transmitted, is still almost purely 

 theoretical, being supported chiefly by the argument that 

 no other view accounts for everything. This is, how- 

 ever, a theological rather than a scientific argument, 

 for the inclusive and complete hypothesis is dear to the 

 ecclesiastic mind. 



It can, perhaps, be remarked that orthodox biologists 

 do not avail themselves of all biological resources. In 

 discussion the salient fact emerges that they rely mainly 

 on cytology for practical support. But since cytology 

 is dependent on the microscope, a valuable but increas- 

 ingly hazardous tool of research as higher powers are 

 used, the more observations are extended the more un- 

 certain are the conclusions reached. Among few of the 

 pure school of neo-Darwinians do we see the biological 

 conception of the organism properly considered, nor do 

 the devotees of cell-structure and the ever-enlarging 

 ritual of the chromosomes seem to reflect that every cell 

 they observe in situ or in the dark field is after all a uni- 

 cellular organism. When it is so considered, since any 

 organism is a definite spatially related set of colonial 

 organisms, it might even seem that Weismann himself 

 had given his whole case away by admitting that uni- 

 cellular organisms could and did acquire and transmit 

 acquired or altered characteristics. 



It may be repeated, moreover, that biologists how- 

 ever learned in cytology and the pure literature of their 



