Weismann’s Challenge 89 
And yet in all else that concerns biological science this period 
was, in very truth, our Golden Age, when the natural history of the 
earth was explored as never before ; morphology and embryology were 
exhaustively ransacked ; the physiology of plants and animals began 
to rival chemistry and physics in precision of method and in the 
rapidity of its advances ; and the foundations of pathology were laid. 
In contrast with this immense activity elsewhere the neglect 
which befel the special physiology of Descent, or Genetics as we now 
call it, is astonishing. This may of course be interpreted as meaning 
that the favoured studies seemed to promise a quicker return for 
effort, but it would be more true to say that those who chose these 
other pursuits did so without making any such comparison; for the 
idea that the physiology of Heredity and Variation was a coherent 
science, offering possibilities of extraordinary discovery, was not 
present to their minds at all. In a word, the existence of such a 
science was well nigh forgotten. It is true that in ancillary periodicals, 
as for example those that treat of entomology or horticulture, or in 
the writings of the already isolated systematists}, observations with 
this special bearing were from time to time related, but the class of 
fact on which Darwin built his conceptions of Heredity and Variation 
was not seen in the highways of biology. It formed no part of the 
official curriculum of biological students, and found no place among 
the subjects which their teachers were investigating. 
During this period nevertheless one distinct advance was made, 
that with which Weismann’s name is prominently connected. In 
Darwin’s genetic scheme the hereditary transmission of parental 
experience and its consequences played a considerable role. Exactly 
how great that role was supposed to be, he with his habitual caution 
refrained from specifying, for the sufficient reason that he did not 
know. Nevertheless much of the process of Evolution, especially 
that by which organs have become degenerate and rudimentary, was 
certainly attributed by Darwin to such inheritance, though since 
belief in the inheritance of acquired characters fell into disrepute, 
the fact has been a good deal overlooked. The Origin without “use 
1 This isolation of the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It 
seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the Origin that when the Darwinian 
view is accepted ‘‘Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they 
will not be incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be a true 
species. This, I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be no slight relief. The endless 
disputes whether or not some fifty species of British brambles are good species will cease.” 
Origin, 6th edit. (1882), p. 425. True they have ceased to attract the attention of those 
who lead opinion, but anyone who will turn to the literature of systematics will find that 
they have not ceased in any other sense. Should there not be something disquieting in the 
fact that among the workers who come most into contact with specific differences, are 
fo be found the only men who have failed to be persuaded of the unreality of those 
differences ? 
