Process of Power Changes 25 



A plant which is continually raised from cut- 

 tings is not raised from seed, and consequently is 

 not exercising its powers of growing from seeds. 

 It may be exercising its powers of producing 

 seeds, but the powers of producing seeds and 

 the power of growing from seeds after they are 

 produced are two different things. Now it hap- 

 pens that all plants which are continually repro- 

 duced by cuttings, grafts, tubers, or divisions of 

 any kind, and not by seeds, gradually and cer- 

 tainly lose their power of producing seeds which 

 will germinate, and ultimately lose the power of 

 producing seeds at all. The germ-plasm cannot 

 retain a power which it does not exercise, and it 

 cannot transmit a power which it does not have. 



The theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm 

 is one of those fallacies which gains a wide cur- 

 rency because of a lack of knowledge of the 

 fundamental characteristics of living things. It 

 assumes that a living body can have a power 

 which it never has exercised, and which was 

 never exercised by any ancestor from which it 

 was derived. Such a thing is utterly impossible. 



Experiments have shown that when smallpox 

 virus is taken from a human patient and inocu- 



