244 Theories Treating of Inheritance 



protoplasmic body it is, just on account of this latter, 

 susceptible of being acted upon by only certain causes 

 (causes which effect the liberation of different individual 

 nuclear energies)." 



"We believe that the capacity of reacting to stimuli 

 resides in the nucleus, but that the capacity of receiving 

 them resides in the protoplasm, which is chemically 

 specific in each elementary organ. The protoplasm is thus 

 the medium, (the zone of perception), between the 

 liberating causes and the nucleus, (the zone of action)." 



"The appearance of elementary processes comes about 

 in each ontogeny through a liberation of potentialities. 

 * * * I break the whole of ontogeny up into a series 

 of liberated effects." 



"Each liberating cause produces not only a chemical 

 specificity and thereby the new elementary process as such, 

 but it produces through this specificity at the same time 

 the limitation by which the new cell is capable of receiv- 

 ing later only certain further liberating causes." 187 



The especially striking thing in this conception is the 

 absence of any real, continuous, reciprocal dependence of 

 the different parts one upon another throughout the 

 whole course of development. Each cell will preserve in 

 its nucleus, it is true, the germinal substance uninjured; 

 but the successive liberation of special nuclear energies 

 which will impart to it its own especial character, depends 

 fundamentally only upon the specific properties which 

 its protoplasm had already acquired earlier, and not upon 

 the reciprocal actions which exist between all parts of the 

 body throughout the whole duration of ontogeny, as it 

 would according to Hertwig's theory, for instance. 



187 Dnesch: Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwicklung. 

 P. 81, 49, 60, 82. 



