150 Inadmissibility of Preformistic Germs 



germinal substance, even though it were as complex as 

 one could imagine ; and a germ substance which is hetero- 

 geneous indeed but each of whose components would 

 nevertheless commence to be active from the very first 

 moment of development must be no less certainly 

 excluded. 



On the other hand we ask : Is it in general possible to 

 conceive, much less accept, these preformistic germs, of 

 which each is set apart for some infinitesimal part of the 

 body, any part provided that it can vary independently 

 of the others? Would the supposition of germs of this 

 nature constitute any explanation whatever of this par- 

 ticulate inheritance, or would this not rather be a pure 

 and simple repetition in other words of the phenomenon 

 which one pretends to explain? 



That is what we propose to consider very briefly in 

 the following last section of' this chapter. 



4. Inadmissibility of Preformistic Germs 



We note in advance that the independently variable 

 and inheritable peculiarities of the organism are not 

 limited merely to the form and structure of entire groups 

 of cells, but can include even the chemical characters of 

 each cell. One would arrive thus at the absurdity that 

 not only each cell, as Darwin's pangenesis already admits, 

 but almost each molecule of the organism must have its 

 representative in the germ plasm. 



Besides this material impossibility the idea of pre- 

 formistic germs encounters insurmountable difficulties 

 from the point of view of their conceivability. 



Is it a conceivable thing that there is for instance a 

 preformistic germ of a certain nervous tic, or of a par- 



