"Determinants of Smaller Growing Power" 213 



ing organ, and the part which performs its function 

 more energetically attracts to itself more nutrition and 

 repairs with interest its loss of matter more rapidly than 

 does the part performing its function less energetically. 

 So in the struggle of the parts for nutrition the more 

 feeble determinants will be at a disadvantage, they 

 become slowly but constantly feebler in the course of 

 generations until finally they degenerate completely." 181 



So that according to the view of this investigator: 

 "It is not the functional change that is inherited; but 

 variations in the biologic value of a part, (for example, 

 of an organ which has become useless), give the im- 

 pulse to the regressive or progressive variations of the 

 germ plasm and these only would establish the heredi- 

 tary functional change of the somatic part." 162 



Now it is just this conception of determinants "of 

 smaller growing power" which is quite inadmissible, and 

 which constitutes a contradiction in terms. 



For what signifies in general "weaker" or "stronger" 

 determinants? The determinants of a small organ are 

 by their very definition not feebler than those of a larger 

 organ; they are only qualitatively different from them. 

 Also when the variation of an organ consists in a 

 diminution of its mass, this is not a diminution of grow- 

 ing power of the respective determinants but an alteration 

 of these latter, which is nothing else than their replace- 

 ment by other qualitatively different determinants. 

 Would Weismann himself say that the respective determi- 

 nants of the fore legs of the kangaroo are provided with 

 a smaller power of growth than those of the hind legs? 

 Or that the fingers of the human hand have determinants 



161 Weismann : Neue Gedanke nzur Vererbungsfrage. P. 14 15. 

 182 Weismann : Ibid. P. 59. 



