682 APPENDIX B. 



taken as thought when they have not been thought and cannot 

 be thought. It sufficiently taxes imagination to assume, as Pro- 

 fessor Weisraann does, that two sets of " ids " or of " determi- 

 nants " in the same egg are, throughout all the cell-divisions 

 which end in the formation of the morula, kept separate, so that 

 they may subsequently energize independently ; or that if they 

 are not thus kept separate, they have the power of segregating in 

 the required ways. But what are we to say when three, four, 

 and even five sets of " ids " or bundles of " determinants " are 

 present ? How is dichotomous division to keep these sets dis- 

 tinct ; or if they are not kept distinct, what shall we say to the 

 chaos which must arise after many fissions, when each set in con- 

 flict with the others strives to produce its particular structure ? 

 And how are the conquering determinants to find they ways out 

 of the melee to the places where they are to fulfil their organizing 

 functions ? Even were they all intelligent beings and each had 

 a map by which to guide his movements, the problem would be 

 sufficiently puzzling. Can we assume it to be solved by uncon- 

 scious units ? 



Thus even had Professor Weismann shown that the special 

 structures of the different individuals in an insect- community are 

 not due to differences in the nurtures they receive, which he has 

 failed to do, he would still be met by this difficulty in the way of 

 his own view, in addition to the three other insuperable difficul- 

 ties grouped together in a preceding section. 



The collateral issue, which has occupied the largest space in 

 the controversy, has, as commonly happens, begotten a second 

 generation of collateral issues. Some of these are embodied in 

 the form of questions put to me, which I must here answer, lest 

 it should be supposed that they are unanswerable and my view 

 therefore untenable. 



In the notes he appends to his Romanes Lecture, Professor 

 Weismann writes : — 



" One of the questions put to Spencer by Ball is quite sufficient to show 

 the utter weakness of the position of Lamarckisra : — if their characteristics 

 did not arise among the workers themselves, but were transmitted from the 

 pre-social time, how does it happen that the queens and drones of every 

 generation can give anew to the workers the characteristics which they them- 

 selves have long ago lost ? " (p. 68). 



It is curious to see put forward in so triumphant a manner, by 

 a professed naturalist, a question so easily disposed of. I answer 

 it by putting another. How does it happen that among those 

 moths of which the female has but rudimentary wings, she con- 

 tinues to endow the males of her species with wings ? How does 

 it happen, for example, that among the Geometridce, the peculiar 



