GERMINAL SELECTION. 53 



at! And this is effected, as I am inclined to believe, 

 through such profound processes of selection in the ^ 

 interior of the germ-plasm as I have endeavored to 

 sketch to you to-day under the title of germinal se- 

 lection. 



I am perfectly well aware how schematic my pres- 

 entation of this process is, and must be at present, 

 owing mainly to our inability to gain exact knowledge 

 concerning the fundamental germinal constituents here 

 assumed. But I regard its existence as assured, al- 

 though I by no means underrate the fact that emi- 

 nent thinkers, like Herbert Spencer, contest its validity 

 and believe they are warranted in assuming a germ 

 which is composed of similar units. I strongly doubt 

 whether even so much as a formal explanation of the 

 phenomena can be arrived at in this manner. So far 

 as direct observation is concerned, the two theories 

 stand' on an equal footing, for neither my dissimilar, 

 nor Spencer's similar, units of germinal substance 

 can be seen directly. 



The attempt has been recently made to discredit 

 my AnlcLgen, or constitutional germ-elements, on the 

 ground that they are simply a subtilised reproduc- 

 tion of Bonnet's old theory of preformation.^ This 



1 Oscar Hertwig, Zeit- und Streitfragen der Biologie, Jena, 

 1894. It is customary now to look upon the preformation- 

 theory of Bonnet as a discarded monstrosity, and on the 

 epigenesis of K. F. Wolff as the only legitimate view, and to 

 draw a parallel between these two and what might be called 

 to-day "evolution" [i. e. unfoldment] and epigenesis. The 

 evolution, or unfoldment, of Bonnet and Harvey, however, 

 was something totally different from modern doctrines of 

 evolution, and Whitman is quite right when he says that 

 even my theory of determinants would have appeared to the 

 inquirers of the last century as "extravagant epigenesis." 



