It is undoubtedly a splendid aim which the newly founded science of developmental mechanics has set itself of laying bare the entire causal line leading from the egg to the finished organism; yet, however much we may wish to see the success of this plan realised, we cannot disguise the fact that little or nothing is to be accomplished by it in the settlement of the problems of heredity. It is impossible to suspend the study of heredity until this mechanics is completed, and even if we could it would help us little, for the riddles of heredity are not concealed in the ontogenesis of types, or, to give an example, in the developmental history of man as a race, but in the ontogenesis of individuals, in that of a definite and particular man. This last ontogenesis exhibits the phenomena of variation, of reversion, of the predominance of the one or the other parent, etc., and no one is likely to believe that inductive evolutional inquiry alone will ever afford us knowledge of these minute and delicate processes, which, in their bearing on the total resultant development, phylogenesis, are after all the most important of all.
There is, accordingly, no choice left. If we are really bent on scientifically investigating the question of heredity, we are obliged perforce to form from the observed facts of heredity a highly detailed and
elaborate theory, on the basis of which we can propound new questions, which will give rise in turn to new facts, and thus will exercise a retroactive influence on the theory, improving and transforming it.
This is precisely what I have sought to accomplish by my theory of Germ-plasm, as I stated in the Preface to the book bearing that name. It was never intended as a theory of life, nor, indeed, primarily, as a theory of evolution, but first and above all as a theory of heredity. I cannot understand, therefore, the animadversion, that my theory in no way furthers our insight into the mechanics of development. That is not its purpose; in fact, it takes the ultimate physical and chemical processes which make up the vital processes for granted; and inevitably it is constrained to do so. Its aim is to put into our hands a serviceable formula by means of which we can go on working in the field of heredity at any rate, and, if I am not mistaken, also in that of evolution. To me, at least, the newest results of developmental mechanics do not seem so widely at variance with the theory of determinants as might appear at first sight; so far as I can see, they can be quite readily made to harmonise with the theory, provided only the initial stage of the disintegration of the germ-plasm in the determinant groups be not invariably placed at the beginning of the process of segmentation, but be transferred according to circumstances to a subsequent period. The exact state of things cannot as yet be determined, so long as the mass of facts is still in constant flux.
In any event I still hold fast to the hope which I expressed in the Preface to my Germ-plasm, that despite the unavoidable uncertainties in its foundation my theory would yet prove more than a mere work
of imagination, and that the future would find in it some durable points which would outlive the mutations of opinion. It is possible that one of these durable gains is my much impugned idea of determinants, and in fact not only will the present essay be made to rest on this idea, but it will also defend it on new grounds, although primarily only as a representation of something which we do not as yet exactly know, but which still exists and on which we can reckon, leaving it to the future to decide the greater or less resemblance of our hypothetical construct to nature.
The real aim of the present essay is to rehabilitate the principle of selection. If I should succeed in reinstating this principle in its emperilled rights, it would be a source of extreme satisfaction to me; for I am so thoroughly convinced of its indispensability as to believe that its demolition would be synonymous with the renunciation of all inquiry concerning the causal relation of vital phenomena. If we could understand the adaptations of nature, whose number is infinite, only upon the assumption of a teleological principle, then, I think, there would be little inducement to trouble ourselves about the causal connexion of the stages of ontogenesis, for no good reason would exist for excluding teleological principles from this field. Their introduction, however, means the ruin of science.
August Weismann.
Freiburg, Nov. 18, 1895.