Furthermore, Brooks’ well-considered and brilliant attempt to modify the theory of Pangenesis cannot escape the reproach that it is based upon possibilities, which one might certainly describe as improbabilities. But although I am of the opinion that the whole foundation of the theory of Pangenesis, however it may be modified, must be abandoned, I think, nevertheless, its author deserves great credit, and that its production has been one of those indirect roads along which science has been compelled to travel in order to arrive at the truth. Pangenesis is a modern revival of the oldest theory of heredity, that of Democritus, according to which the sperm is secreted from all parts of the body of both sexes during copulation, and is animated by a bodily force; according to this theory also, the sperm from each part of the body reproduces the same part. If, according to the received physiological and morphological ideas of the day, it is impossible to imagine that gemmules produced by each cell of the organism are at all times to be found in all parts of the body, and furthermore that these gemmules are collected in the sexual cells, which are then able to reproduce again in a certain order each separate cell of the organism, so that each sexual cell is capable of developing into the likeness of the parent body; if all this is inconceivable, we must inquire for some other way in which we can arrive at a foundation for the true understanding of heredity. My present task is not to deal with the whole question of heredity, but only with the single although fundamental question--“How is it that a single cell of the body can contain within itself all the hereditary tendencies of the whole organism?” I am here leaving out of account the further question as to the forces and the mechanism by which these tendencies are developed in the building-up of the organism. On this account I abstain from considering at present the views of Nägeli, for as will be shown later on, they only slightly touch this fundamental question, although they may certainly claim to be of the highest importance with respect to the further question alluded to above. Now if it is impossible for the germ-cell to be, as it were, an extract of the whole body, and for all the cells of the organism to dispatch small particles to the germ-cells, from which the latter derive their power of heredity; then there remain, as it seems to me, only two other possible, physiologically conceivable, theories as to the origin of germ-cells, manifesting such powers as we know they possess. Either the substance of the parent germ-cell is capable of undergoing a series of changes which, after the building-up of a new individual leads back again to identical germ-cells; or the germ-cells are not derived at all, as far as their essential and characteristic substance is concerned, from the body of the individual, but they are derived directly from the parent germ-cell.