Instincts and Particulate Inheritance 151 



ticular instinct, that there is a pangen or a group of 

 pangens for the instinct of the hunting dog, that there is 

 a determinant or group of determinants of the instinct of 

 the new-born chick, which knows already how to peck at 

 the wheat and swallow it ? How can we conceive of these 

 instincts which are the consequences of very complicated 

 combinations and interconnections of almost innumerable 

 centers and nerve tracts, as due to one separate germ, 

 which having come up at the opportune moment of on- 

 togeny, and at the exact point of the organism, produces 

 them by itself, automatically, and we may say independ- 

 ently of all the rest of the organism already formed? 



And yet these instincts actually constitute variable 

 and inheritable peculiarities of the organism, susceptible 

 of being present or absent independently of all the other 

 peculiarities of the organism. But if, in order to explain 

 this "particulate inheritance" one has recourse to germs 

 especially preformed just for this, would this constitute 

 anything else than a purely verbal explanation without 

 any real inherent significance? 



"A man, for example," Le Dantec very rightly says, 

 "is composed of about sixty trillions of cells, and he is 

 nevertheless reproduced by sexual elements of very small 

 size : this is the phenomenon to be explained. It has been 

 thought that the difficulty would be less, or at least would 

 not appear so distinctly, if one were to divide the problem 

 into sixty trillion parts, if one could replace the reproduc- 

 tion of the man by sixty trillions partial reproductions; 

 and there have been consequently imagined infinitely 

 small particles which are to the cells as the whole germinal 

 substance is to the man." 123 



1JJ8 Le Dantec: Traite de Biologic. P. 22422^. 



