194 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



in the germ-plasm or the chromosomes, they would be 

 compelled to come down to the earth and stand on the 

 firm ground of chemical or biochemical action. Once 

 there they might be led to admit at last that any steady 

 external stimulus may alter one cell, and that if so it may 

 alter many, or that the accidental acquisition of some 

 metal or salt may end in its being a permanent tool in the 

 armoury of the whole organism. Their very insistence 

 on germinal qualities and intra-germinal " struggle " and 

 selection is sound so far as it goes ; but they cannot be 

 allowed to remain juggling with such factors without 

 telling us in what the struggle consists, and what weapons 

 or tools are used, or at the very least without taking 

 into consideration what other sciences can supply them 

 with. It is a sound principle, and certainly one I have 

 always tried to bear in mind, that no body of earnest 

 workers can be altogether wrong. Even the Hering- 

 Semon " mnemes " and Samuel Butler's " memory " can 

 now be translated into biochemical factors. If in one 

 sense a " mneme " seemed to mean no more than that 

 an altered thing was no longer what it was, we may still 

 turn the word into measurable factors. The experience 

 of the cell is in its education, its acquisition of new tools, 

 and " memory " is but the due repetition of phenomena 

 when like causes and catalysts are in action in like tissues. 

 The desired bridge between those who assert and those 

 who deny transmission must in the end be found by 

 building on factors which admit the basal doctrines of 

 both. It may be admitted that the " germ-plasm," or 

 reproductive cell with all the tools in its nucleus or 

 scattered as granules among the great society of its 

 molecular units, changes for the most part with great 

 difficulty. It is a conservative social organism. But 



