Incapable of Explaining Particulate Inheritance 153 
species, genus, or family etc., and so of the size, struc- 
ture, and shape of a leaf, of the characteristic and often 
constant spots upon the leaflets of flowers (orchids, and so 
on). All these properties manifest themselves only by the 
orderly cooperation of many cells. Or think of the prop- 
erties of the human individual, of the form of the skull, 
of the nose, and so on. All these very characteristic 
properties cannot be due only to the presence in the germ 
of pangens which must form the hundreds and thousands 
of different cells which compose the property in question; 
they must be due rather to a fixed grouping of the pan- 
gens or of some other corresponding primary element of 
the protoplasm, transmissible in its fixity from generation 
to generation.” 124 
But when under the pressure of logical necessity we 
pass from simple preformistic germs, either free or in- 
termingled in any way, to germs built up together into a 
fixed structure, we fall at once into all the difficulties and 
contradictions of pure Weismannian preformation, which 
we have already discussed, beginning with the one which 
we have seen to present itself first, namely that it is quite 
inexplicable how this “fixed grouping of the pangens” can 
divide in successive germ plasms and nevertheless remain 
unaltered in its structure. 
Preformed germs, materially impossible and theoreti- 
cally inconceivable, are nothing else than empty, wordy 
names, and appear besides to be quite incapable of ex- 
plaining even the most important phenomena of particu- 
late inheritance on account of which they were especially 
devised, and which constitute the only excuse for their 
existence, when once they are separated from the stronger 
124Weismann: Das Keimplasma. P. 22—23. 
