CHAPTER VII 



REVIEW OF CERTAIN CONCLUSIONS 



BUT if we accept these views regarding the existence of biophoric 

 molecules and the essential nature of growth as involving a 

 multiplication of the same by a process akin to crystallization, 

 we are inevitably led to certain very interesting conclusions, 

 which may here be rapidly passed in review. Each, it is true, 

 might well be expanded into a chapter, but the limitations set 

 by this course of lectures demands that I do little beyond indicat- 

 ing the headings. 



(i.) The Continuity of the Germ Plasm. Weismann conceives 

 his biophores and determinants as handed down direct from 

 parent to offspring, so that the germ plasm is potentially eternal, 

 and that of a thousand generations back is contained in the 

 germ cells of the generation of to-day and has its influence upon 

 the configuration of the body of the individual derived from 

 those germ cells. This he speaks of as the " continuity of the 

 germ plasm." 



But, obviously, this is not a continuity of substance, as Weis- 

 mann implies, but merely a potential continuity of molecular 

 arrangement and constitution. For growth and multiplication 

 of the living molecules, for one conjugated ovum and spermato- 

 zoon to give rise to the countless millions of sperm cells of the 

 male of any of the higher animals, 1 there must be such active 

 reproduction of the parental biophores that the chance of one 

 of the original biophores of a grandparent finding itself in the 

 nucleus of a sperm cell must be infinitesimal. The likelihood 

 is that while such, it is true, control the constitution of the new 



1 According to Loeb, the average seminal ejaculation in man contains 

 226,000,000 sperm cells. Consult further Marshall, Physiology of Repro- 

 duction. 



