of the specific germ-plasm, which the parent egg-cell contains, is not used up in producing the offspring, but is reserved unchanged to produce the germ-cells of the following generation. Thus the germ-cells—so far as regards their essential part the germ-plasm—are not a product of the body itself, but are related to one another in the same way as are a series of generations of unicellular organisms derived from one another by a continuous course of simple division. Thus the question of heredity is reduced to one of growth. A minute portion of the very same germ-plasm from which, first the germ-cell, and then the whole organism of the parent, were developed, becomes the starting-point of the growth of the child.
The Cause of Variation.
But if this were all, the offspring would reproduce the parent exactly, in every detail of form and structure; and here we see the importance of sex, for each new germ grows out of the united germ-plasms of two parents, whence arises a mingling of their characters in the offspring. This occurs in each generation; hence every individual is a complex result reproducing in ever-varying degrees the diverse characteristics of his two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and other more remote ancestors; and that ever-present individual variation arises which furnishes the material for natural selection to act upon. Diversity of sex becomes, therefore, of primary importance as the cause of variation. Where asexual generation prevails, the characteristics of the individual alone are reproduced, and there are thus no means of effecting the change of form or structure required by changed conditions of existence. Under such changed conditions a complex organism, if only asexually propagated, would become extinct. But when a complex organism is sexually propagated, there is an ever-present cause of change which, though slight in any one generation, is cumulative, and under the influence of selection is sufficient to keep up the harmony between the organism and its slowly changing environment.[1]
- ↑ There are many indications that this explanation of the cause of variation is the true one. Mr. E.B. Poulton suggests one, in the fact that parthenogenetic reproduction only occurs in isolated species, not in groups of related species; as this shows that parthenogenesis cannot lead to the evolution of
