Note 68 — Chapter V

I find that a passage explaining the sense in which I use these terms has been accidentally omitted from Chapter III, where they are first introduced; and, as the sheets of that chapter have been already printed off, I here supply the omission. The terms in italics are not Weismann’s, and I have employed them merely for the purpose of giving precision to his views. By “absolute stability of germ-plasm” I mean to indicate that degree of stability which he has hitherto postulated as the necessary basis for his doctrine of heritable variations being solely due to admixtures of germ-plasm in sexual unions. By “perpetual continuity of germ-plasm” I intend to denote that amount of continuity which he still postulates as the necessary basis for his correlative doctrine touching the non-inheritance of acquired characters.