WEISMANN'S THEORY OF HEREDITY 6? 



the power of reproducing the whole organism. 

 The cells of the organism are differentiated 

 into two essentially different groups, the re- 

 productive cells — ova or spermatozoa — and 

 the somatic cells, or cells of the body. The 

 immortality of the unicellular organism has 

 passed over to the former — the reproductive 

 cells — the others must die, and since the 

 body of the individual is chiefly composed of 

 them, it must die also." 



And so death came into the world, not by 

 sin, as the Genesis legend reports, but through 

 sex ; a most astonishing conclusion, it may be, 

 but one from which there is apparently no 

 escape. Immortality still remains, it is true, 

 but it is not the immortality of the conscious 

 self. Positive science, nothwithstanding all its 

 glorious gifts, has dealt a terrible blow to those 

 gorgeous dreams of primitive men and modern 

 mystics : those hopes and longings which have 

 sustained millions of our race in hours of 

 supreme sorrow; a blow which not even the 

 bravest has been able to receive without flinch- 

 ing. The only immortality of which science 

 has any surety is that of these unconscious 

 single cells, which make possible the repro- 

 duction of the species. 



Weismann, then, divides the cells which 

 compose the bodies of the higher animals, in- 



