Romanes on Weismann

Abstract

DR. ROMANES is a most competent hurler of hard words, and in this volume is concerned at least as much to convince the reader that Weismann is an uncertain guide as to be to him himself a certain guide. In the preface he states his intention to publish his criticisms “in separate form and in comparatively small editions, so that further chapters may be added with as much celerity as Prof. Weismann may hereafter produce his successive works.” In the text, writing of the relations between the views of Galton and Weismann, he talks of those immense reaches of deductive speculation, which, in his opinion, merely “disfigure the republication of stirp under the name of germ-plasm” (!) The mention of certain occurrences which are believed in by Dr. Romanes, but the admission of which he considers illogical on the part of Weismann, “seemed attributable to mere carelessness on the part of their author.” Another consideration is “made by Weismann for the sole purpose of saving as much as he can of his previous theory of variation.” Another is “an obvious equivoque.” The mechanism of heredity is planned out (in Weismann's latest volume) “in such minuteness of detail and assurance of accuracy that one is reminded of that which is given by Dante of the topography of the Inferno.”

An Examination of Weismannism.

By G. J. Romanes (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893.)