Incapable of Explaining Participate Inheritance 153 



species, genus, or family etc., and so of the size, struc- 

 ture, and shape of a leaf, of the characteristic and often 

 constant spots upon the leaflets of flowers (orchids, and so 

 on). All these properties manifest themselves only by the 

 orderly cooperation of many cells. Or think of the prop- 

 erties of the human individual, of the form of the skull, 

 of the nose, and so on. All these very characteristic 

 properties cannot be due only to the presence in the germ 

 of pangens which must form the hundreds and thousands 

 of different cells which compose the property in question ; 

 they must be due rather to a fixed grouping of the pan- 

 gens or of some other corresponding primary element of 

 the protoplasm, transmissible in its fixity from generation 

 to generation." 124 



But when under the pressure of logical necessity we 

 pass from simple preformistic germs, either free or in- 

 termingled in any way, to germs built up together into a 

 fixed structure, we fall at once into all the difficulties and 

 contradictions of pure Weismannian pre formation, which 

 we have already discussed, beginning with the one which 

 we have seen to present itself first, namely that it is quite 

 inexplicable how this "fixed grouping of the pangens" can 

 divide in successive germ plasms and nevertheless remain 

 unaltered in its structure. 



Preformed germs, materially impossible and theoreti- 

 cally inconceivable, are nothing else than empty, wordy 

 names, and appear besides to be quite incapable of ex- 

 plaining even the most important phenomena of particu- 

 late inheritance on account of which they were especially 

 devised, and which constitute the only excuse for their 

 existence, when once they are separated from the stronger 



"*Weismann : Das Keimplasma. P. 22 23. 



