That the size of the nervous system is the measure of the ability to maintain life, is a proposition that must, however, be taken with some qualifications. The ratio between the amounts of gray and white matter present in each case is probably a circumstance of moment. Moreover, the temperature of the blood may have a modifying influence; seeing that small nervous centres exposed to rapid oxidation will be equivalent to larger ones more slowly oxidized. Indeed, we see amongst mankind, that though, in the main, size of brain determines mental power, yet temperament exercises some control. There is reason to think, too, that certain kinds of nervous action involve greater consumption of nervous tissue than others; and this will somewhat complicate the comparisons. Nevertheless, these admissions do not affect the generalization as a whole, but merely prepare us to meet with minor irregularities.
Let me here note in passing a highly significant implication. The development of nervous structures which in such cases take place, cannot be limited to the finger-ends. If we figure to ourselves the separate sensitive areas which severally yield independent feelings, as constituting a network (not, indeed, a network sharply marked out, but probably one such that the ultimate fibrils in each area intrude more or less into adjacent areas, so that the separations are indefinite), it is manifest that when, with exercise, the structure has become further elaborated, and the meshes of the network smaller, there must be a multiplication of fibres communicating with the central nervous system. If two adjacent areas were supplied by branches of one fibre, the touching of either would yield to consciousness the same sensation: there could be no discrimination between points touching the two. That there may be discrimination, there must be a distinct connection between each area and the tract of grey matter which receives the impressions. Nay more, there must be, in this central recipient-tract, an added number of the separate elements which, by their excitements, yield separate feelings. So that this increased power of tactual discrimination implies a peripheral development, a multiplication of fibres in the trunk-nerve, and a complication of the nerve-centre. It can scarcely be doubted that analogous changes occur under analogous conditions throughout all parts of the nervous system—not in its sensory appliances only, but in all its higher co-ordinating appliances, up to the highest.
Essays upon Heredity, p. 87.
Les Maladies des Vers à soie, par L. Pasteur, Vol. I, p. 39.
Curiously enough, Weismann refers to, and recognizes, syphilitic infection of the reproductive cells. Dealing with Brown-Séquard's cases of inherited epilepsy (concerning which, let me say, that I do not commit myself to any derived conclusions), he says:—"In the case of epilepsy, at any rate, it is easy to imagine [many of Weismann's arguments are based on things 'it is easy to imagine'] that the passage of some specific organism through the reproductive cells may take place, as in the case of syphilis" (p. 82). Here is a sample of his reasoning. It is well known that epilepsy is frequently caused by some peripheral irritation (even by the lodging of a small foreign body under the skin), and that, among peripheral irritations causing it, imperfect healing is one. Yet though, in Brown-Séquard's cases, a peripheral irritation caused in the parent by local injury was the apparent origin, Weismann chooses gratuitously to assume that the progeny were infected by "some specific organism," which produced the epilepsy! And then though the epileptic virus, like the syphilitic virus, makes itself at home in the egg, the parental protoplasm is not admitted!