However, quite apart from the question of the validity of this suggestion, we can form no conception as to the means by which an acquired morphological change in certain nerve-cells—a change which is not anatomical, and probably not even microscopical, but purely molecular in nature—can be possibly transferred to the germ-cells: for this ought to take place in such a manner as to produce in their minute molecular structure a change which, after fertilization and development into a new individual, would lead to the reproduction of the same epileptogenic molecular structure of the nervous elements in the grey centres of the pons and medulla oblongata as was acquired by the parent. How is it possible for all this to happen? What substance could cause such a change in the resulting offspring after having been transferred to the egg or sperm-cell? Perhaps Darwin’s gemmules may be suggested; but each gemmule represents a cell, while here we have to do with molecules or groups of molecules. We must therefore assume the existence of a special gemmule for each group of molecules, and thus the innumerable gemmules of Darwin’s theory must be imagined as increased by many millions. But if we suppose that the theory of pangenesis is right, and that the gemmules really circulate in the body, accompanied by other gemmules from the diseased parts of the brain, and that some of these latter pass into the germ-cells of the individual,—to what strange results would the further pursuit of this idea lead? What an incomprehensible number of gemmules must meet in a single sperm- or germ-cell, if each of them is to contain a representative of every molecule or group of molecules which has formed part of the body at each period of ontogeny. And yet such is the unavoidable consequence of the supposition that acquired molecular states of certain groups of cells can be transmitted to the offspring. This supposition could only be rendered intelligible by some theory of _preformation_[224], such as Darwin’s pangenesis; for the latter theory certainly belongs to this category. We must assume that each single part of the body at each developmental stage is, from the first, represented in the germ-cell as distinct particles of matter, which will reproduce each part of the body at its appropriate stage as their turn for development arrives.