244 Theories Treating of Inheritance 
protoplasmic body it is, just on account of this latter, 
susceptible of being acted upon by only certain causes 
(causes which effect the liberation of different individual 
nuclear energies).” 
“We believe that the capacity of reacting to stimuli 
resides in the nucleus, but that the capacity of receiving 
them resides in the protoplasm, which is chemically 
specific in each elementary organ. The protoplasm is thus 
the medium, (the zone of perception), between the 
liberating causes and the nucleus, (the zone of action).” 
“The appearance of elementary processes comes about 
in each ontogeny through a liberation of potentialities. 
* * * JT break the whole of ontogeny up into a series 
of liberated effects.” 
“Each liberating cause produces not only a chemical 
specificity and thereby the new elementary process as such, 
but it produces through this specificity at the same time 
the limitation by which the new cell is capable of receiv- 
ing later only certain further liberating causes.” 187 
The especially striking thing in this conception is the 
absence of any real, continuous, reciprocal dependence of 
the different parts one upon another throughout the 
whole course of development. Each cell will preserve in 
its nucleus, it is true, the germinal substance uninjured; 
but the successive liberation of special nuclear energies 
which will impart to it its own especial character, depends 
fundamentally only upon the specific properties which 
its protoplasm had already acquired earlier, and not upon 
the reciprocal actions which exist between all parts of the 
body throughout the whole duration of ontogeny, as it 
would according to Hertwig’s theory, for instance. 
*"Driesch: Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwicklung. 
P. 81, 49, 60, 82. 
