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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
factors. If in these cases, we are to admit the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters, we must at the same time note its difficulties. In determining the character and the features of the offspring, it is contended by some that they do not reappear in the child in the self-same form in which they were impressed on the parents. Each of the parents contributes a certain part to the child, so that its features are of a blended sort intermediate between those of each of the parents. In this blending, of course, the contribution of either of the parents may be more effective than the contribution of the other, in which case the former is said to be “pre-potent". De Vries' experiments on plant-hybrids, however, show that there is nothing like real mingling or blending but that the child possesses some of the characters of each of the parents; these characters continuing in some sort of separateness from each other. Accordingly, some of the biologists think that it is reasonable to hold that the ancestral characters which are transmissible appear in the offspring not in a blended manner but in their pristine purity or “exclusiveness” so to say. The question then, is: How is it possible? In what manner can an acquired character of a parent be inherited by the offspring ?
TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS
Darwin's theory of Pangenesis, as we have seen, supposed that the cells in all parts and organs of an animal body threw off minute Gemmules which constituted the germcells. There was then no essential difference between the body cells and the germ-cells. A modification in any part of organ of a Body modified the Body cells in a corresponding manner and the germ-cells also in an indirect way. These germ-cells thus modified in a peculiar manner were supposed by Darwin "to be transmitted from the parents to the offspring and were generally developed in the generation which immediately succeeds but were often transmitted in a dormant state during many generations and were then developed”. According to Darwin, then, peculiar features being common to the offspring and its
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