Such isolation and independence in the body,
on the part of the germ-cells, is opposed to all that we know of the
organic unity of the body, whose cells have arisen by the
differentiation of, and division of labor between, cells primitively
alike. The facts of bud-variation, of changes in the parent stock
due to grafting, and others, of which Mr. Darwin has given a summary
in the eleventh chapter of the first volume of his "Plants and
Animals under Domestication," have never been adequately explained
by Weismann in accordance with his theory. He has perhaps succeeded
in parrying their force by showing that some such explanation is
conceivable; they still point strongly against him.
Wilson has good reason for his "steadily growing conviction that
the cell is not a self-regulating mechanism in itself, that no cell
is isolated, and that Weismann's fundamental proposition is false."
But, granting the force of these criticisms, the question still
remains, Is the special effect of use or disuse transmissible? Would
the blacksmith's son have a stronger right arm?
1. The isolation and independence of the germ-cells, which Weismann
postulates as opposing this, can hardly be as great as he thinks. 2.
It is in his view impossible to conceive how these acquired
characteristics can in any way reach and affect the germ-cells in
such a manner as to reappear in the next generation.
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