THE GERM-PLASM THEORY 38] 



number and arrangement, and on the size and on the frequency I 

 repetition of certain parts. These distinctive characters ar. 

 as constant and as strictly transmissible, and may be as heritably 

 variable as those which depend on specific cell-differentiation, and 

 they must therefore likewise be determinable by definite elements 

 of the germ-plasm. Obviously enough, however, these elements are 

 not of the same nature as the known specific histological elementary 

 particles; they can be neither nerve-, muscle-, nor ffland-bioohors 

 Ihey must rather be vital units of such a kind that they communicate 

 to the cells and lineage of cells, into whose bodies they migrate from 

 within the nucleus, a definite vital power, thai is, an organization 

 which regulates the size, form, number of divisions, and so on 

 these cells-— in short their whole prospective significance. Always, 

 however, they act in co-operation with the cell-body int., which they 

 have penetrated. 



Throughout we must hold ourselves aloof from the idea thai 

 •characters' are transmissible. It is customary, indeed, to speak 

 as if this were so, and it is also necessary, because we can only 

 recognize the ' characters ' of a body, and not the essential 'nature' 

 on which these characters depend; but the determinants are qo< seed- 

 grains of individual characters, but co-determinants of the nature 

 of the parts which they influence. There are not special determinants 

 of the size of a cell, others of its specific histological differentiation, 

 and still others of its duration of life, power of multiplication, and 

 so on; there are only determinants of the whole physiological nature 

 of a cell, on which all these and many other 'characters' depend. 

 For this reason alone I should object to the assumption thai the 

 determinants of the germ are ready-made histological substam 

 That is as unlikely as that their groups in the germ-plasm are 

 'miniature models' of the finished parts of the body, 



I conceive of the process of cell-differentiation as follows: at 

 every cell-stage in the ontogeny determinants attain to maturity, and 

 break up so that their biophors can migrate into the cell-bodies, 

 so that the quality of each cell is thus kept continually under control, 

 and may be more or less modified, or may remain the same. By the 

 'maturity' of a determinant I mean its condition when by continual 

 division it has increased in number to sueli a point tli.it its disintegration 

 into biophors and their migration into the cell-substance ran bake place. 



One more point I must touch upon here, the question of the 

 'liberation' or 'stimulation' of the determinants. The activity Mi- 

 an organ never depends on itself alone: the contraction of a muscle is 

 induced by a nerve stimulus or by an electric current : the activity 



