Chapter XXIV: Conclusion

The hypothesis of Pangenesis, as applied to the several great classes of facts just discussed, no doubt is extremely complex, but so are the facts. The chief assumption is that all the units of the body, besides having the universally admitted power of growing by self-division, throw off minute gemmules which are dispersed through the system. Nor can this assumption be considered as too bold, for we know from the cases of graft-hybridisation that formative matter of some kind is present in the tissues of plants, which is capable of combining with that included in another individual, and of reproducing every unit of the whole organism. But we have further to assume that the gemmules grow, multiply, and aggregate themselves into buds and the sexual elements; their development depending on their union with other nascent cells or units. They are also believed to be capable of transmission in a dormant state, like seeds in the ground, to successive generations.

In a highly-organised animal, the gemmules thrown off from each different unit throughout the body must be inconceivably numerous and minute. Each unit of each part, as it changes during development, and we know that some insects undergo at least twenty metamorphoses, must throw off its gemmules. But the same cells may long continue to increase by self-division, and even become modified by absorbing peculiar nutriment, without necessarily throwing off modified gemmules. All organic beings, moreover, include many dormant gemmules derived from their grandparents and more remote progenitors, but not from all their progenitors. These almost infinitely numerous and minute gemmules are contained within each bud, ovule, spermatozoon, and pollen-grain. Such an admission will be declared impossible; but number and size are only relative difficulties. Independent organisms exist which are barely visible under the highest powers of the microscope, and their germs must be excessively minute. Particles of infectious matter, so small as to be wafted by the wind or to adhere to smooth paper, will multiply so rapidly as to infect within a short time the whole body of a large animal. We should also reflect on the admitted number and minuteness of the molecules composing a particle of ordinary matter. The difficulty, therefore, which at first appears insurmountable, of believing in the existence of gemmules so numerous and small as they must be according to our hypothesis, has no great weight.

The units of the body are generally admitted by physiologists to be autonomous. I go one step further and assume that they throw off reproductive gemmules. Thus an organism does not generate its kind as a whole, but each separate unit generates its kind. It has often been said by naturalists that each cell of a plant has the potential capacity of reproducing the whole plant; but it has this power only in virtue of containing gemmules derived from every part. When a cell or unit is from some cause modified, the gemmules derived from it will be in like manner modified. If our hypothesis be provisionally accepted, we must look at all the forms of asexual reproduction, whether occurring at maturity or during youth, as fundamentally the same, and dependent on the mutual aggregation and multiplication of the gemmules. The regrowth of an amputated limb and the healing of a wound is the same process partially carried out. Buds apparently include nascent cells, belonging to that stage of development at which the budding occurs, and these cells are ready to unite with the gemmules derived from the next succeeding cells. The sexual elements, on the other hand, do not include such nascent cells; and the male and female elements taken separately do not contain a sufficient number of gemmules for independent development, except in the cases of parthenogenesis. The development of each being, including all the forms of metamorphosis and metagenesis, depends on the presence of gemmules thrown off at each period of life, and on their development, at a corresponding period, in union with preceding cells. Such cells may be said to be fertilised by the gemmules which come next in due order of development. Thus the act of ordinary impregnation and the development of each part in each being are closely analogous processes. The child, strictly speaking, does not grow into the man, but includes germs which slowly and successively become developed and form the man. In the child, as well as in the adult, each part generates the same part. Inheritance must be looked at as merely a form of growth, like the self- division of a lowly-organised unicellular organism. Reversion depends on the transmission from the forefather to his descendants of dormant gemmules, which occasionally become developed under certain known or unknown conditions. Each animal and plant may be compared with a bed of soil full of seeds, some of which soon germinate, some lie dormant for a period, whilst others perish. When we hear it said that a man carries in his constitution the seeds of an inherited disease, there is much truth in the expression. No other attempt, as far as I am aware, has been made, imperfect as this confessedly is, to connect under one point of view these several grand classes of facts. An organic being is a microcosm--a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and numerous as the stars in heaven.