108 An Examination of Weismannism. 



himself as willing to resign both his distinctive postu- 

 lates — continuity as perpetual, and stability as absolute. 

 But it is evident that such passages must be ignored 

 by his critics, because, although as far as his theory 

 of heredity is concerned they betoken an approach to 

 the less speculative views of Galton, any such approach 

 is proportionally destructive of his theory of evolution. 

 It must not be supposed that I am taking an 

 ungenerous advantage of these occasionally funda- 

 mental concessions. On the contrary, one cannot but 

 admire the candour which they display. But, as 

 I have said, it is necessary for us to ignore them, if 

 only in order to examine the Weismannian theory of 

 germ-plasm as a distinctive theory at all. And more 

 than this. Seeing that his theory of heredity differs 

 from Galton's chiefly in being further an elaborate 

 theory of evolution (founded on the two additional 

 postulates in question), my main object has been to 

 show the enfeeblement of the former which Weis- 

 mann has caused by his addition of the latter. If he 

 were to express his willingness to abandon his theory 

 of evolution for the sake of strengthening his theory of 

 heredity by identifying its main features with those of 

 Galton's, personally I should have no criticism to pass. 

 Indeed, I was myself one of the first evolutionists who 

 called in question the Lamarckian factors ; and ever 

 since the publication of Galton's theory of heredity at 

 about the same time, I have felt that in regard to its 

 main principles — or those in which it agrees with 

 Weismann's — it is probably the true one. But I can 

 nowhere find that Weismann is thus prepared to 

 surrender his theory of evolution. Occasionally he 

 plays fast and loose with the two additional postulates 



