________________
Difficulty in
Weisman's theory.
the Doctor's hyppothesis, the characters of each of the children referred to in the above by way of concrete illustration, are not the results of hereditary transmission but are a manifestation of "those characters which were potentially contained in the structure of the germ-plasm.” And the, question, therefore naturally crops up in our minds, where did the potential characters and tendencies of the germ-plasm originate from? He says, "from the common stock.” But what and where that common stock, we are to look for? Dr. Weisman does not inform us anything on the point, nor does he solve the real problem at issue.
Besides the physiological principle of hereditary transmission involves grave moral difficulties. It means the iniquities of the fathers visited upon the children. One commits the wrong but another receives the punishment ! Can absurdity go any further? The reason why the embryo of the bat cannot develop into a man, consists in this that human organism, according to the Jain philosophy, is the product of a different set of causes and conditions ; or
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