230 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



tinction of pangenesis is destroyed; or, as Mr. Lewes 

 justly says, 8 " If gemmules produce whole cells, we have 

 the very power which was pronounced mysterious in larger 

 organisms." 



Mr. Darwin also does not see the force of the objection 

 to the power of self-division which must be asserted of the 

 gemmules themselves if Pangenesis be true. The objection, 

 however, appears to many to be formidable. To admit the 

 power of spontaneous division and multiplication in such 

 rudimentary structures, seems a complete contradiction. 

 The gemmules, by the hypothesis of Pangenesis, are the 

 ultimate organized components of the body, the absolute 

 organic atoms of which each body is composed ; how then 

 can they be divisible ? Any part of a gemmule would be 

 an impossible (because a less than possible) quantity. If it 

 is divisible into still smaller organic wholes, as a germ-cell 

 is, it must be made up, as the germ-cell is, of subordinate 

 component atoms, which are then the true gemmules. This 

 process may be repeated ad infinitum, unless we get to 

 true organic atoms, the true gemmules, whatever they may 

 be, and they necessarily will be incapable of any process of 

 spontaneous fission. It is remarkable that Mr. Darwin 

 brings forward in support of gemmule fission, the observa- 

 tion that "Thuret has seen the zoospore of an alga divide 

 itself, and both halves germinate." Yet on the hypothesis 

 of Pangenesis, the zoospore of an alga must contain gem- 

 mules from all the cells of the parent algas, and from all the 

 parts of all their less remote ancestors in all their stages of 

 existence. What wonder then that such an excessively 

 complex body should divide and multiply ; and what parity 

 is there between such a body and a gemmule ? A steam- 

 engine and a steel-filing might equally well be compared 

 together. 



Prof. Delpino makes a further objection which, how 



8 Fortnightly Review, New Series, vol. iii., April, 1868, p. 508. 



