48 
THE ORGANIC CELL 
The question asked by the older biologists was — How do 
the characters of the organism get into the germ-cells which 
it produces ? The real question is — How are the characters 
of an organism represented in the germ- cell which produces 
it ? To understand the relation existing between successive 
generations, we should say in the words of Samuel Butler, 
not that a hen produces another hen through the medium of 
an egg, but that a hen is merely an egg’s way of producing 
another egg. 
To put the problem in its simplest form, the question is, 
not how the characters get into the germ-cells, but how the 
characters are represented in the germ-cells. 
Weismann 1 draws a very sharp line between the body 
substance, or body plasm, and the germ plasm. To quote 
an example : An egg contains germ plasm, which was derived 
from that of the parent ; the egg develops and so does the 
germ plasm, and gradually the germ plasm becomes converted 
into body plasm, which forms the resulting chick. Some of the 
germ plasm, however, is not used up to form body substance, 
but remains as such, forming the germ-cells of the next genera- 
tion. As a Weismannian axiom allow me to state that, while 
germ plasm may be and is converted into body plasm, body 
plasm can never become germ plasm. 
In this one statement lies the explanation of what is gradu- 
ally becoming an accepted fact, viz. that any change affecting 
the body -cells but not the germ-cells cannot be transmitted to 
future generations. Thus acquired characters (Lamarckian 
factors) in the true sense cannot be inherited. The germ plasm 
of one generation is passed on to the next, and so on and on, 
and influences coming from without cannot affect the germ- 
cells, and therefore cannot be transmitted. The germ-cells 
must be looked upon as the links in a long, unbroken chain of 
germ plasm, which under certain conditions, usually the union 
of two germ -cells, produce a body, the germ-cells still continuing 
their existence in this body. Thus we get the conception of a 
long line of germ plasm, budding out from which at regular 
intervals is a new generation, the individual or individuals of 
1 Mendelism in Theory and Practice , E. Wynstone- Waters. 
