Darwin's theory of
pangenesis beyond avoiding the pretence that I understand either the
theory itself or what Professor Weismann says about it; all I am
concerned with is Professor Weismann's admission, made immediately
afterwards, that the somatic cells may, and perhaps sometimes do,
impart characteristics to the germ-cells.
"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion," he
continues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose we
must wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remark
that, if we admit even occasional communication of changes in the
somatic cells to the germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of the
wedge, as Mr. Darwin did when he said that use and disuse did a good
deal towards modification. Buffon, in his first volume on the lower
animals, {288} dwells on the impossibility of stopping the breach
once made by admission of variation at all. "If the point," he
writes, "were once gained, that among animals and vegetables there
had been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, which
had been produced in the course of direct descent from another
species; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass was
but a degeneration from the horse--then there is no farther limit to
be set to the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong in
supposing that with sufficient time she could have evolved all other
organized forms from one primordial type.
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