in Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis, is wholly
unnecessary for the explanation of these phenomena. Still we cannot
exclude the possibility of such a transmission occasionally
occurring, for even if the greater part of the effects must be
attributable to natural selection, there might be a smaller part in
certain cases which depends on this exceptional factor."

I repeatedly tried to understand Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis,
and so often failed that I long since gave the matter up in despair.
I did so with the less unwillingness because I saw that no one else
appeared to understand the theory, and that even Mr. Darwin's
warmest adherents regarded it with disfavour. If Mr. Darwin means
that every cell of the body throws off minute particles that find
their way to the germ-cells, and hence into the new embryo, this is
indeed difficult of comprehension and belief. If he means that the
rhythms or vibrations that go on ceaselessly in every cell of the
body communicate themselves with greater or less accuracy or
perturbation, as the case may be, to the cells that go to form
offspring, and that since the characteristics of matter are
determined by vibrations, in communicating vibrations they in effect
communicate matter, according to the view put forward in the last
chapter of my book Luck or Cunning, then we can better understand
it. I have nothing, however, to do with Mr. 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, whi