Bard 231 



not by any mediate path, like the influence exerted by 

 electric induction-currents in the production of induced 

 currents, and Bard has therefore given this process the 

 name of vital induction. 



But this induction would be exercised not merely by 

 the germ cells upon the somatic, but also by the latter 

 upon the former. And the modified soma is capable of 

 bringing about the inheritance of the modifications it has 

 undergone, by means of an influence of exactly this na- 

 ture exerted upon the germ cells contained in it. 176 



But the inheritance of these new characters by the 

 next succeeding organism by the means of the germ cells 

 which give rise to this latter can be accepted only upon 

 the supposition that it is effected by means of the same 

 vital induction which had already transmitted the char- 

 acters of the paternal soma into the germ, now acting in 

 the reverse way. And Bard himself seems to admit this. 

 But if this is true for the characters acquired last, it must 

 also be true for all the characters acquired phylogeneti- 

 cally. Consequently the role which specific cell division 

 or qualitative nuclear division in the Weismannian sense 

 would play in the histologic differentiation and in the 

 whole development would become reduced to nothing. 



We shall limit ourselves then to drawing attention to 

 the inconceivability, made more evident by the considera- 

 tions just mentioned, of the idea that the germ cells could 

 participate in the development in two such extremely 

 different modes of action simultaneously, and the lack of 

 any experimental proof for this supposed vital induction. 



176 Bard: Influence specifique a distance des elements celhilaires 

 les uns sur les autres. Archives de Medecine experimentale ; i. serie, 

 t. II. Paris, Masson. May i, 1890; and La specificite cellulaire et ses 

 principales consequences. La Semaine Medicale. Paris, March 10, 

 1894. 



