[Footnote A:  See articles by Whitman and Wilson, Journal of
  Morphology, vol. viii., pp. 649, 607, etc.]

“Interaction of cells” can help us but little.  For how can neighboring cells direct others placed in a new position?  The expression, if not positively misleading and untrue, is at the best only a restatement of fact.  It certainly offers no explanation.  Flood-tide is not due to the interaction of particles of water, though this may influence the form of the waves.

The centre of control is therefore not to be sought in individual cells, whether germ-cells or somatic, but in the organism.  And it is the whole organism, one and indivisible, which controls in germ, embryo, and adult, in egg and owl.  This individuality, or whatever you will call it, impresses itself upon developing somatic cells, moulding them into appropriate organs, and upon germ-cells in process of formation, moulding them so that they may continue its sway.  The muscle, modified by use or disuse, is a better expression of the individuality of its possessor, and the same individuality moulds similarly and simultaneously the germ-cells.  Both are different expressions or manifestations of the same individuality.  Only slowly does the individuality mould the muscles and nerves of the adult body to its use.  Still more slow may be the moulding of the still more refractory germ-plasm, if such there be.  But the moulding process goes on parallel in the two cases.

But Weismann’s argument rests not merely upon any difficulty or impossibility of the transmissibility of acquired characteristics.  His argument is rather that all facts can be better explained by his theory without postulating or accepting such transmission, cases of which have never been absolutely proven.  But the question is not whether his theory offers a possible explanation of the facts, but whether it is the most probable explanation of all the facts.  No one would deny, I think, that the continuity of the germ-plasm offers the best and most natural explanation of heredity; and that variations could be produced by the influence on the germ-plasm of external conditions seems entirely probable.

But when we consider the aggregation of these variations in a process of evolution, his theory seems unsatisfactory.  We have already seen that what we commonly call a variation involves not one change, but a series of changes, each term of which is necessary.  Muscle, nerve, and ganglion must all vary simultaneously and correspondingly.  Correlation and combination are just as essential as variation.  And evolution often demands the disappearance of less fit structures just as much as the advance of the fittest.  Says Osborne, “It is misleading to base our theory of evolution and heredity solely upon entire organs; in the hand and foot we have numerous cases of muscles in close contiguity, one steadily developing, the other degenerating.”  Weismann offers the