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.17% 
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. 
“Bard: Influence spécifique 4 distance des éléments cellulaires 
les uns sur les autres. Archives de Médecine expérimentale; 1. série, 
t. II. Paris, Masson. May 1, 1890; and La spécificité cellulaire et ses 
principales conséquences. La Semaine Médicale. Paris, March 10, 
1894. 
