Part 33

However, quite apart from the question of the validity of this suggestion, we can form no conception as to the means by which an acquired morphological change in certain nerve-cells—a change which is not anatomical, and probably not even microscopical, but purely molecular in nature—can be possibly transferred to the germ-cells: for this ought to take place in such a manner as to produce in their minute molecular structure a change which, after fertilization and development into a new individual, would lead to the reproduction of the same epileptogenic molecular structure of the nervous elements in the grey centres of the pons and medulla oblongata as was acquired by the parent. How is it possible for all this to happen? What substance could cause such a change in the resulting offspring after having been transferred to the egg or sperm-cell? Perhaps Darwin’s gemmules may be suggested; but each gemmule represents a cell, while here we have to do with molecules or groups of molecules. We must therefore assume the existence of a special gemmule for each group of molecules, and thus the innumerable gemmules of Darwin’s theory must be imagined as increased by many millions. But if we suppose that the theory of pangenesis is right, and that the gemmules really circulate in the body, accompanied by other gemmules from the diseased parts of the brain, and that some of these latter pass into the germ-cells of the individual,—to what strange results would the further pursuit of this idea lead? What an incomprehensible number of gemmules must meet in a single sperm- or germ-cell, if each of them is to contain a representative of every molecule or group of molecules which has formed part of the body at each period of ontogeny. And yet such is the unavoidable consequence of the supposition that acquired molecular states of certain groups of cells can be transmitted to the offspring. This supposition could only be rendered intelligible by some theory of _preformation_[224], such as Darwin’s pangenesis; for the latter theory certainly belongs to this category. We must assume that each single part of the body at each developmental stage is, from the first, represented in the germ-cell as distinct particles of matter, which will reproduce each part of the body at its appropriate stage as their turn for development arrives.

I will only briefly indicate some of the inevitable contradictions in which we are involved by such a theory. One and the same part of the body must be represented in the germ- or sperm-cell by many groups of gemmules, each group corresponding to a different stage of development; for if each part gives off gemmules, which ultimately reproduce the part in the offspring, it is clear that special gemmules must be given off for each stage in the development of the part, in order to reproduce that identical stage. And Darwin quite logically accepts this conclusion in his provisional hypothesis of pangenesis. But the ontogeny of each part is in reality continuous, and is not composed of distinct and separate stages. We imagine these stages as existing in the continuous course of ontogeny; for here, as in all departments of nature, we make artificial divisions in order to render possible a general conception, and to gain fixed points in the continuous changes of form which have in reality occurred. Just as we distinguish a sequence of species in the course of phylogeny, although only a gradual transition, not traversed by sharp lines of demarcation, has taken place, so also we speak of the stages of ontogeny, although we can never point out where any stage ends and another begins. To imagine that each single stage of a part is present in the germ, as a distinct group of gemmules, seems to me to be a childish idea, comparable to the belief that the skull of the young St. Laurence exists at Madrid, while the adult skull is to be found in Rome.

We are necessarily driven to such conceptions if we assume that the transmission of acquired characters takes place. A theory of preformation alone affords the possibility of an explanation: an epigenetic theory is utterly unable to render any assistance in reaching an interpretation. According to the latter theory, the germ does not contain any preformed gemmules, but it possesses, as a whole, such a chemical and molecular constitution that under certain circumstances, a second stage is produced from it. For example, the two first segmentation spheres may be regarded as such a second stage; these again possess such a constitution that a certain third stage, and no other, can arise from them, forming the four first segmentation spheres. At each of these stages the spheres produced are peculiar to a distinct species and a distinct individual. From the third stage a fourth arises, and so on, until the embryo is developed, and still later the mature animal which can reproduce itself. No one of the parts of such an animal was originally present as distinct parts in the egg from which it was developed, however minute we may imagine these parts to be. If now an inherited peculiarity shows itself in any organ of the mature animal, this will be the consequence of the preceding developmental stages, and if we were able to investigate the molecular structure of all these stages as far back as the egg-cell, we should trace back to the latter some minute difference of molecular constitution which would distinguish it from any other egg-cell of the same species, and was destined to be the cause of the subsequent appearance of the peculiarity in the mature animal. It is only by the aid of some such hypothesis that we can conceive the cause of hereditary individual differences and the tendencies towards hereditary diseases. Hereditary epilepsy would be intelligible in this way, that is, when the disease is congenital and not due to the presence of microbes, as is presumably the case with artificially induced epilepsy.

The question now arises as to whether we can conceive the communication of such traumatic and therefore acquired epilepsy to the germ-cells. This is obviously impossible under the epigenetic theory of development described above. In what way can the germ-cells be affected by molecular or histological changes in the pons varolii and medulla oblongata? Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the central nervous system exercises trophic influences upon the germ-cells, and that such influences may consist of something more than variations in nutritive conditions, and may even include the power of altering the molecular constitution of the germ-plasm in spite of its usual stability; even if we concede these suppositions, how is it conceivable that the changes produced would be of the exact nature and in the exact direction necessary in order to confer upon the germ-plasm the molecular structure of the first ontogenetic stage of an epileptic individual? How can the last ontogenetic stage of the ganglion cells in the pons and medulla of such an individual, stamp upon the germ-plasm in the germ-cells of the same animal—not indeed the peculiar structure of the stage itself—but such a molecular constitution as will ensure the ultimate appearance of epilepsy in the offspring? The theory of epigenesis does not admit that the parts of the full-grown individual are contained in the germ as preformed material particles, and therefore this theory cannot allow that anything is added to the germ-plasm; but in accepting the above-made supposition, we are compelled to assume that the molecular structure of the whole of the germ-plasm is changed to a slight extent.

Nägeli is quite right in maintaining that the solid protoplasm alone, as opposed to the fluid part, i.e. that part of the protoplasm which has passed into solution, can act as the bearer of hereditary tendencies. This appears to be undoubtedly proved by the fact that the amount of material provided by the male parent for the development of an embryo is in almost all animals far smaller than the amount provided by the female parent.

In Mammalia the share contributed by the father probably only forms about one hundred-billionth part of that contributed by the mother, and yet nevertheless the influence of the former in heredity is on an average equal to that exerted by the latter[225]. Now, from the point of view of epigenesis, no molecule of the brain of an epileptic animal can reach the germ-cell except in a state of solution, and therefore no direct increase in the germ-plasm can be referred to such molecules, quite apart from the fact that such addition, even if possible, could not be of any value, because the last stage of the epileptic tendency must be represented in the nerve-cells and nerve-fibres of the diseased brain, while the first stage ought to be represented in the germ-cell.

It may be safely asserted that according to the theory of epigenesis the germ-cells cannot be influenced except as regards their nutrition. Nutritive changes may be imagined to occur through the varying trophic influence of the nervous system upon the sexual organs, but the structure of the germ-plasm cannot be altered by mere nutritive changes, or at all events it cannot be altered in that distinct and definite direction which is required by the supposed transmission of acquired epilepsy.

Thus the transmission of artificially produced epilepsy can neither be explained upon the epigenetic theory, nor upon the theory of preformation; it can only be rendered intelligible if we suppose that the appearance of the disease in the offspring depends upon the introduction and presence of living germs, viz. of microbes. The supposed transmission of this artificially produced disease is the only definite instance which has been hitherto brought forward in support of the transmission of acquired characters. I believe that I have shown that such support is deceptive, not because there is any uncertainty about the fact of the transmission itself, but because it is a transmission which cannot depend upon heredity, and is in all probability due to infection.

Ever since I began to doubt the transmission of acquired characters, I have been unable to meet with a single instance which could shake my conviction. There were many instances in which hereditary transmission was clearly established, but in none of them was there any reason to suppose that the characters transmitted were really acquired. For example, Fritz Müller has recently informed me of an instance in which he believes that there can be no doubt of the transmission of acquired characters. His observations are so interesting in several respects that I will quote them here. He says in his letter, ‘Among the bastards of two species of _Abutilon_, in which I had never observed hexamerous flowers, there was a single plant with a few such blossoms. As these flowers are sterile with the pollen of the same plant, I was obliged to fertilize it with pollen from another plant bearing only pentamerous flowers, in order to obtain seeds from the former. For three weeks I examined all the flowers from a plant grown from such seed, finding 145 pentamerous, 103 hexamerous, and 13 heptamerous flowers. I examined similarly the flowers of another plant produced from seed obtained from pentamerous flowers from the same parent plants. There were 454 pentamerous and 6 hexamerous flowers, and hence only 1·3 per cent. of the latter kind.’

It must certainly be admitted that the large proportion of abnormal hexamerous flowers depends upon heredity in the instance first quoted; but the hexamerous condition is not an acquired character; it is merely the first appearance of a new innate character. It is not due to the reaction of the vegetable organism under some external stimulus, for it appeared in a plant exposed to conditions similar to those which acted upon the other plant which only produced the normal pentamerous flowers. It must therefore have resulted from the tendencies which were present in the germ from which the plant itself developed, either as a spontaneous change in the germ-plasm or through the combination of two parental germ-plasms—a combination which may lead to the appearance or the reality of a new character. We know that the germ-plasm of each individual is not a simple substance, but possesses a very complex composition, for it consists of a number of ancestral germ-plasms represented in very different proportions. Now, although we cannot learn anything directly about the processes of growth of the germ-plasm, and its resulting ontogenetic stages, yet we do know, chiefly from observations upon man, that the characters of ancestors appear in the offspring in very different combinations and in very different degrees of strength. This may, perhaps, be explained by assuming that in the union of parental germ-plasms which takes place at fertilization, the contained ancestral germ-plasms unite in different ways, and thus come to grow with different strengths. Certain ancestral germ-plasms will meet and together produce a double effect: other opposed germ-plasms will neutralize each other; and between these two extremes all intermediate conditions will occur. And these combinations will not only take place at fertilization, but also at every stage of the whole ontogenetic history, for each stage is represented by its idioplasm, which is itself composed of ancestral idioplasms.

We do not yet know enough to be able to prove in detail the manner in which new characters may arise from such a combination of different kinds of germ-plasm. And yet it appears to me that such a view, e.g. in the case of the variation of buds, is by far the most natural. There is indeed a single example in which we can, to some extent, understand how it is that a new character may arise by these means. Certain canary-birds have a tuft of feathers on the head, but if two such birds are paired, their descendants are generally bare-headed, instead of having larger tufts[226]. The formation of a tuft depends upon the fact that the feathers are scanty and in fact absent from part of the skin of the head. Now when the scanty plumage of both parents is combined in the offspring the latter is bare-headed. Hence by the combination of ancestral characters a new character (bare-headedness) is produced, and one which is hardly likely to have ever occurred in the ancestors of existing canaries.

We do not know the causes which have been in operation when a flower possesses one petal more than the usual number, any more than we can explain why it is that one star-fish has five and another six rays. We cannot unravel the details of the mysterious relationship between two parent germ-plasms, each of which is composed of a countless number of ancestral germ-plasms from the first and second back to the _n_th degree. But we can nevertheless maintain in a general way that such irregularities are the result of this complex struggle between the germ-plasms in the ovum and the idioplasms in the subsequent stages of the developing organism, and that they are not the result of external influences.

If, however, acquired characters are brought forward in connexion with the question of the transformation of species, the term ‘acquired’ must only be applied to those characters which do not arise from within the organism, but which arise as the reaction of the organism under some external stimulus, most commonly as the consequence of the increased or diminished use of an organ or part. We have then to learn whether the altered conditions of life, by forcing an organism to adopt new habits, can by such means lead directly, and not indirectly through natural selection, to the transformation of the species; or whether the effects of increased or diminished use of certain parts, implied by the new habits, are restricted to the individual itself, and therefore powerless to effect any direct modification of the species.

Fritz Müller’s observation is also interesting in another respect: it appears to controvert my views upon heredity as expressed in the theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm. If a single flower can transmit to its descendants special peculiarities which were not possessed by its ancestors, we seem to be driven to the conclusion that the ancestral germ-plasm has not passed into the flower in question, but that new germ-plasm has been formed, inasmuch as the new characters are derived from the flower itself, and not from any of its ancestors. I think, however, that the observation admits of another interpretation: a specimen of _Abutilon_ with many hundred flowers is not a single individual, but a colony consisting of numerous individuals which have arisen by budding from the first individual developed from the seed.

I have not hitherto considered budding in relation to my theories, but it is obvious that it is to be explained from my point of view, by supposing that the germ-plasm which passes on into a budding individual consists not only of the unchanged idioplasm of the first ontogenetic stage (germ-plasm), but of this substance altered, so far as to correspond with the altered structure of the individual which arises from it—viz. the rootless shoot which springs from the stem or branches. The alteration must be very slight, and perhaps quite insignificant, for it is possible that the differences between the secondary shoots and the primary plant may chiefly depend upon the changed conditions of development, which takes place beneath the earth in the latter case, and in the tissues of the plant in the former. Thus we may imagine that the idioplasm, when it developes into a flowering shoot, produces at the same time the germ-cells which are found in the latter. We thus approach an understanding of Fritz Müller’s observation; for if the whole shoot which produces the flower arises from the same idioplasm which also forms its germ-cells, we can readily understand why the latter should contain the same hereditary tendencies which were previously expressed in the flower which produced them. The fact that variations may occur in a single shoot depends upon the changes explained above, which occur in the idioplasm during the course of its growth, as a result of the varying proportions in which the ancestral idioplasms may be contained in it.

Fritz Müller’s observation affords a beautiful confirmation of this view, for if the flower itself transmitted the hexamerous condition to its germ-cells, we could not understand why some of the extremely rare hexamerous flowers were produced by the crossing of two pentamerous flowers, in the control experiment. An explanation of this fact can only be found in the assumption that the germ-plasm contained in the mother plant, during its growth and consequent distribution through all the branches of the colony, became arranged into a combination of idioplasms, which, whenever it predominated (as it did at certain places), necessarily led to the formation of hexamerous flowers. I will not consider here the question as to whether this combination is to be looked upon as an instance of reversion, or whether it represents something new. Such a question is of no importance for our present purpose; but the hexamerous flowers of the control experiment prove, in my opinion, that germ-plasm containing the requisite combination was distributed in the mother plant and also existed, but in insufficient amount, in shoots which did not produce any hexamerous flowers.

Appendix V. On the Origin of Parthenogenesis[227].

The transformation of heterogeny into pure parthenogenesis has obviously been produced by other causes as well as by those mentioned in the main part of this paper. Other and quite different circumstances have also had a share in its production. Pure parthenogenesis may be produced without the intermediate condition of heterogeny. Thus, for example, the pure and exclusive parthenogenesis with which the large Phyllopod crustacean, _Apus_, is reproduced at most of its habitats, has not arisen from the loss of previously existent sexual generations, but simply from the non-appearance of males, accompanied by the simultaneous acquisition of the power, on the part of the females, of producing eggs which do not require fertilization. This is proved by the fact that males occur in certain scattered colonies of this species, and sometimes they are even present in considerable numbers. But even if we were not aware of these facts, the same conclusions might nevertheless have been drawn from the fact that _Apus_ produces eggs of only one form—viz. resting eggs with hard shells. In every case in which parthenogenesis has been first introduced in alternation with sexual reproduction, the resting eggs are produced by the latter generations, while the parthogenetic generations produce eggs with thin shells, in which the embryo developes and hatches very rapidly. In this way parthenogenesis leads to a rapid increase of the colony. In _Apus_ such increase in the number of individuals is gained in an entirely different manner, viz. by the fact that all the animals become females, which produce eggs at a very early age, and continue producing them in increasing fertility for the whole of their life. In this manner an enormous number of eggs collects at the bottom of the pool inhabited by the colony, so that after it has dried up, in spite of loss from various destructive agencies, there will still remain a sufficiency of eggs to reproduce a numerous colony, as soon as the pool has filled again.

This form of parthenogenetic reproduction is especially well suited to the needs of species inhabiting small pools which entirely depend upon rain-fall, and which may disappear at any time. In these cases the time during which the colony can live is often too short to permit the production of several generations even from rapidly developing summer-eggs. Under these circumstances the pool would often suddenly dry up before the series of parthenogenetic generations had been run through, and hence before the appearance of the sexual generation and resting eggs. In all such cases the colony would be exterminated.

This consideration might lead us to think that Crustacea, such as the _Daphnidae_, which develope by means of heterogeny, would hardly be able to exist in small pools filled by the rain; but here also nature has met the difficulty by another adaptation. As I have shown in a previous paper[228], the heterogeny of the species of _Daphnidae_ which inhabit such pools is modified in such a manner, that only the first generation produced from the resting eggs consists of purely parthenogenetic females, while the second includes many sexual animals, so that resting eggs are produced and laid, and the continuance of the colony is secured a few days after it has been first founded; viz. after the appearance of the first generation.

But it is also certain that in the _Daphnidae_, heterogeny may pass into pure parthenogenesis by the non-appearance of the sexual generations. This seems to have taken place in certain species of _Bosmina_ and _Chydorus_, although perhaps only in those colonies of which the continuance is secured for the whole year; viz. those which inhabit lakes, water-pipes, or wells in which the water cannot freeze. In certain insects also (e. g. _Rhodites rosae_) pure parthenogenesis seems to be produced in a similar manner, by the non-appearance of males.