CHAPTER V 



THE PRODUCTION OF NATIONALITY : 

 EPIGENETIC FACTORS 



IN my opinion the most important of the moulding 

 forces that produce the differences in nationality are 

 epigenetic, that is to say that they are imposed on 

 the hereditary material and have to be re-imposed 

 in each generation. In the last quarter of the nine- 

 teenth century, August Weismann investigated the 

 modes of origin of the sexual cells of the Hydrome- 

 dusae, and discovered that the male and female 

 reproductive cells of these branching, plant-like 

 animals sometimes ripened in bud-like outgrowths, 

 sometimes in portions that broke off and floated 

 away as little swimming jellyfish. But however or 

 wherever they finally appeared, they could be traced 

 back through the whole development of the branching 

 colony to the original fertilized egg-cell from which 

 that colony was developed. He extended his obser- 

 vations to many other kinds of animals, and came to 

 the general conclusion that a fertilized egg-cell, which 

 is the starting-point of an animal, the joint contri- 

 bution of the male and female parents, divides into 

 two portions. One portion, growing, dividing and 

 multiplying, slowly builds up the new individual, 

 and its daughter-cells, as they are marshalled to form 



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