How Somatization Reduces Germinal Capacity 85 



ontogeny is completed, for then the nuclei are always 

 exposed to one specific current or to a limited group of 

 specific currents peculiar to the adult state. There would 

 remain over only a small or very inconsiderable number 

 of those somatic elements which were acquired last and 

 which would thenceforth continually increase in mass. 

 The cell would thus lose by degrees its undifferentiated 

 embryonic aspect, and its exclusively somatic characters 

 would steadily increase. 



While according to Weismann there would be a 

 fundamental distinction between the germinal nuclei set 

 apart for the preservation of the entire hereditary mass, 

 and the somatic nuclei which from the first would receive 

 only such particles of that hereditary mass as are indis- 

 pensable for their function, and the ontogenetic passage 

 from one to the other would take place suddenly and 

 directly at the very commencement of development; 

 according to the centroepigenetic hypothesis, on the 

 contrary, there would not exist any essential difference 

 between them, because they differ from each other only 

 in the number and the specificity of their respective 

 potential elements, and the passage from one to the 

 other would be effected gradually and slowly. And this 

 transition would be due we repeat only to the constant 

 acquisition by the nuclei destined to become somatic, of 

 ne\v specific potential elements, which at first are simply 

 added to the germinal elements already present but finish 

 by causing the latter gradually to disappear on account 

 of the requirements of nutrition and space and by taking 

 their place themselves. 



Without needing to have recourse to a reserve 

 idioplasm, or to any other equally involved subsidiary 

 hypothesis, one can explain in this way the phenomena, 



