How, then, we may well ask, is it that so able a naturalist and so clear a thinker as Weismann can have so far departed from the inductive methods as to have not merely propounded the question touching Continuity and its degrees, or even of Continuity as absolute; but to have straightway assumed the latter possibility as a basis on which to run a system of branching and ever-changing speculations concerning evolution, variation, the ultimate structure of living material, the intimate mechanism of heredity, or, in short, such a system of deductive conjectures as has never been approached in the history of science? The answer to this question is surely not far to seek. Must it not be the answer already given? Must it not have been for the sake of rearing this enormous structure of speculation that Weismann has adopted the assumption of Continuity as absolute? As we have just seen, Galton had well shown how a theory of heredity could be founded on the general doctrine of Continuity, without anywhere departing from the inductive methods--even while fully recognizing the possibility of such continuity as absolute. But Galton's theory was a "_Theory of Heredity_," and nothing more. Therefore, while clearly perceiving that the Continuity in question _may_ be absolute, he saw no reason, either in fact or in theory, for concluding that it _must_ be. On the contrary, he saw that this question is, for the present, necessarily unripe for profitable discussion--and, _a fortiori_, for the shedding of clouds of seed in all the directions of "Weismannism." Hence, what I desire to be borne in mind throughout the following discussion is, that it will have exclusive reference to the question of fact already stated, without regard to any superjacent theories; and, still more, that there is a vast distinction between any question touching the degrees in which acquired characters are transmitted to progeny, and the question as to whether they are ever transmitted in any degree at all. Now, the latter question, being of much greater importance than the former, is the one which will mainly occupy our attention throughout the rest of this Section.