orbid
condition of the system might easily reproduce the whole chain of
consequences and might also have caused the loss of toes.

The particulars of the guinea-pig cases are very inadequately
recorded,[58] but the results are so anomalous[59] that Brown-Sequard's
own conclusion is that the epilepsy and the inherited injuries are
_not_ directly transmitted, but that "what is transmitted is the morbid
state of the nervous system." He thinks that the missing toes may
"possibly" be exceptions to this conclusion, "but the other facts only
imply the transmission of a morbid state of the sympathetic or sciatic
nerve or of a part of the medulla oblongata." Until we can tell what is
transmitted, we are not in a position to determine whether there is any
true inheritance or only an exaggerated simulation of it under peculiar
circumstances. When the actual observers believe that the mutilations
and epilepsy are not the cause of their own repetition, and when these
observers guard themselves by such phrases as, "if any conclusion can at
present be drawn from those facts," we who have only incomplete reports
to guide us may well be excused if we preserve an even more pronounced
attitude of caution and reserve.[60] The morbid state of the system may
be wholly due to general injury of the germs rather than to specific
inheritance.

Weismann suggests that the morbid condition of the nervous system may be
due to some infection such as might arise from microbes, which find a
home in the mutilated and disordered nervous system in the parent, and
subsequently transmit themselves to the offspring through the
reproductive elements, as the infections of various diseases appear to
do--the muscardine silkworm disease in particular being known to be
conveyed to offspring in this manner.

But whether we can discover the true explanation or not, inherited
mutilations can hardly be accounted for as the result of a general
tendency to inherit acquired modifications. How could a factor which
seems to be totally inoperative in cases of ordinary mutilation, and
only infinitesimally operative in transmitting the normal effects of use
and disuse, suddenly become so powerful as to completely overthrow
atavism, and its own tendency to transmit the non-mutilated type of one
of the parents and of the non-mutilated type presented by the injured
parent in earlier life? Does not so striking and abrupt an
intensification of its usually insignificant power de