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The SEED of the Woman

When Darwin formulated his theory of Natural Selection, it seemed obvious to him, and he easily persuaded many of his contemporaries, that any living thing which acquired a particular advantage over its competitors during its life time, would automatically pass that benefit on to its young by inheritance. Thus by a process akin to compound interest, the gains of each new generation were added to those of the last and linear progress in the development of higher and higher forms of life was guaranteed.

Any such supposed advantage accruing to an individual as the result of life experience is generally referred to as an Acquired Characteristic. For example, the man who becomes a blacksmith and develops tremendous arm and shoulder muscles would automatically endow his children with a superior physique, even though he himself may have been something of a weakling as a child. One of the strongest advocates of the inheritance of such acquired characteristics was the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829).

The fact seemed obvious and essential if any progress was to be made in improving the species of animals of particular value to man, and superficially there seemed to be a great deal of evidence in support of it. Darwin was confident that he had the mechanism he needed to make his hypothesis workable even when applied to human society. But towards the end of the last century it was becoming increasingly apparent that Lamarck was mistaken, that acquired characteristics are either not inherited at all or so rarely that the assumed linear progress of life through geological ages could not be attributed to the operation of any such mechanism.

Moreover, it quickly became obvious that there were many examples in human history of “mutilations” persistently practiced by men upon their fellows for centuries which nevertheless were not inherited. Chinese girls, from time immemorial, had their feet tightly bound because it was felt that small feet added to a woman’s beauty, yet Chinese babies were still born with normal feet (187)

One of the most famous experiments of this nature in which an attempt was made to demonstrate whether mutilation of the parents could lead to defective offspring, was carried out by August Weismann (1834 - 1914), Professor of Biology at the University of Freiburg and Breisgau, whose chief interest was in Embryology. Weismann cut off the tails of hundreds of rats, generation after generation, but never succeeded in getting any baby rats born without tails. Some witty individual with a literary background and inspired by Shakespeare observed, “There is a divinity doth shape their ends, rough hew them though we may!”

Weismann’s conclusion, based almost entirely upon reflection rather than on experiment, was that every body carried within itself in some kind of concentrated form a deposit of hereditary substance which he termed “the germ plasm.” (188) This was the reservoir of specialized material out of which the elements of the next generation would be derived. He believed that unless external influences broke through the defenses surrounding this reservoir of germ plasm, there would be no transmission of any characters acquired during the life time of the parent. Such characters affected only the body of the parent and not his or her germ plasm. If such characters acquired during life did show up in the offspring, it must be presumed that somehow the influence of these characters had penetrated the defenses and reached the germ plasm. He even went so far as to hypothesize that the germ plasm was particulate in nature, the particles each in some way being carriers of an inheritable factor. He knew nothing about genes at the time, a fact which makes his insight all the more remarkable.

Commenting on this apparent resistance to change which is built into all living things, Sir Julian Huxley, in 1938, said, (189)

In spite of all the work that has been done, we have only established the very definite certainty that to a great many apparently outward influences the germ plasm is quite unresponsive.

Professor Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, after outlining experiments which involved the controlled breeding of over 300 generations of one species of fly, concluded: (190)

The objective of this experiment was, of course, to see whether it would be possible in any way to influence the germ plasm by various manipulations of the environment. Raymond Pearl summed up the situation by saying, “the demonstration of the inherent stability of the genic mechanism of heredity that this experiment has given is extremely impressive.” (190)

Now the explanation for this negative conclusion is owing to a large extent to the work of Weismann. Quite early in his professional career as an embryologist, he began to find that he could no longer continue his research in developmental physiology due to failing eyesight which seriously restricted his use of a microscope. As a result, he turned to the theoretical aspects of his subject - with remarkably beneficial consequences in terms of our subsequent understanding of the earliest stages in the development of the fertilized ovum. His basic conclusions have since been “substantiated to a surprising degree by the work in genetics in succeeding years,” as Robert Briggs and Thomas King have observed. (191)

The fertilization of the ovum by a spermatozoon initiates a process of development in which the seed begins to multiply until a certain number of cells are formed, all of which appear to share the constitution and totipotency * of the ovum itself.

Then, for reasons which are only just now beginning to be understood, further division of some of these cells is accompanied by a change in their constitution which may be due to their reduced size or their orientation with respect to the rest of the cells, or to chemical alteration, or to internal reorganization related to the time lapsed since the process of cleavage began. (192) It has been proposed by Christian P. Raven that the cytoplasm has begun to develop a complicated spatial structure due to a reorientation of its contents as it ages or due to some genuinely new structures arising as a result of chemical reactions taking place in the egg. At any rate, the various parts of the egg, which were all alike before, now begin to show differences in chemical composition. (193) Weismann rightly surmised that some such change signaled the beginning of the emergence of body cells, the rest of the original cells meanwhile preserving their character specifically as germ cells. Thus the germ cells give rise to the germ cells or seed of the next generation: while the body cells give rise to the organs of reproduction which will house them and see to their ultimate fertilization, as well as to the body of which these organs form a part. The body cells merely serve as the arena in which this reproductive process is brought to maturity. Thus is carried forward the germ plasm from generation to generation in an unbroken chain. The body cells are built out of, and by, the germ cells or germ plasm; the germ plasm is not built out of the body. It was this basic hypothesis which was perhaps Weismann’s most important contribution. It is commonly termed “the continuity of the germ plasm

The following diagram (Fig. 7) may help to show what is really involved here, underscoring the rather humbling fact that the body is almost incidental, being merely the housing for the seed; whereas the seed is the only truly continuing element.

Generation after generation, bodies die and return to the dust, but the seed continues in an unbroken line reaching, in fact, uncorrupted in the woman from Adam to Mary and of course it still continues to perpetuate itself.

The simplest way of explaining how physical death has passed upon all men through man is to assume that in natural generation the corruption which finally overwhelms the bodies of men and women alike is introduced to the ovum via the male seed but does not actually take effect until the stage of embryonic development has been reached at which these differentiated body cells have begun to form. The mortogenic factor has apparently had no influence upon the germ plasm of the woman but only upon the germ plasm of the man. By contrast, it does have its deadly influence upon the differentiating body cells of BOTH the male and female embryo once the body cells begin to form by diverging in their constitution from the germ plasm. In short, the germ plasm of the male, and the bodies of both males and females, are mortalized. But the germ plasm of the female remains immortal.

That such a mechanism might be responsible for changes in cells subsequently derived from the germ plasm was suggested by Weismann. In 1881 he wrote: (194)

Weismann certainly did not have in view the context presently under discussion, but his perceptive mind led him to a conclusion which is very relevant to the issue. We have a situation in which two lines of cells, both with the potential of immortality, are housed in the bodies of two people (Adam and Eve) who subsequently surrender the immortality of their bodies. The immediate cause of this loss of immortality is a poison which is fatal to all body cells. The same poison also proves fatal to the male spermatozoa which will later be generated out of this germ plasm. Unlike the oocytes in the female which are already formed at the time of birth, spermatozoa are manufactured throughout the adult life of the male. They are apparently susceptible to the influence of body cells, especially those of the tissues which generate them.

When any attempt is made artificially to promote self-replication and further development of a single spermatozoon, the results are negative. The sperm are not viable for more than a few days unless fused with the ovum. But when the female ovum is treated suitably (at least in the animal world below man), it may develop into a mature organism. It is capable, therefore, of replicating itself indefinitely, even in the absence of fusion with a spermatozoon. When this is observed in nature it is referred to as parthenogenesis, meaning essentially virgin conception leading to virgin birth. The fact of parthenogenesis is clearly established for the female seed: (195) the same cannot be said to have been observed for the male seed.

The ovum is, in fact, a unicellular organism. And by virtue of its ability to replicate itself indefinitely under appropriate conditions, it must be assumed to have retained the same kind of physical immortality which other unicellular organisms (like amoeba or paramecia, for example) still enjoy. By contrast, although the individual spermatozoon has all the appearance of a highly active and extremely complex unicellular organism, it does not have the power to replicate itself, and therefore does not enjoy a like physical immortality. It does not behave like a unicellular organism.

Sometimes it is argued that the proportion of cytoplasm surrounding the nucleus of the male spermatozoon is too small to supply it with the energy reservoir necessary to enable it to replicate itself. As a consequence, the nucleus cannot survive for more than 24 - 36 hours or so, unless it is fused with the ovum: it simply runs out of energy. The female seed has several thousand times (196) as much food available to supply the energy for cleavage because it is so much larger, though the nucleus itself is no larger than in the male seed. To test whether this is true, the male nucleus has been experimentally transferred by microsurgery into an enucleated ovum in order to supply it with adequate energy. (197) The results, however, have been disappointing. The spermatozoon nucleus still cannot perpetuate itself beyond a few divisions. It is thus apparent that there is a profound difference in the constitution of these two seeds in respect to their potential immortality. Both will, or course, die if not housed appropriately according to their nature, but whereas the mammalian ovum can with surprising ease be made to divide and multiply (198) and grow into a whole animal (though always a female) (199), the male spermatozoon cannot.

Whatever the nature of the defect in the male seed brought about by the entrance of the poison, it is almost certainly the channel by which the mortogenic factor is introduced into the ovum at the time of conception, even though the effect itself is not felt in the presumptive organism until the multiplying cells begin the process of differentiation for the express purpose of forming body cells. (200)

Now Weismann set forth this theory of the “continuity of the germ plasm” in the following way (Fig. 8):

With remarkably few modifications, his conclusions have stood the test of time. (201) His thinking triggered the somewhat facetious remark which is often made to freshmen students when they are first introduced to these concepts: “The hen is merely the egg’s way of laying another egg.” The thought is a depressing one if man himself is viewed merely as a plaything of Nature, a by-product of a process bent upon a blind course of species improvement without respect to the worth of the individual. For the individual becomes simply one stage in an entirely impersonal process. As Kenneth Walker put it rather effectively: (202)

It is, then, a simple fact that the body does not generate the ova (in which case the ova would inevitably have become heir to the defect of the body) but the ovum generates the body. As Professor A. S. Pearse put it, “through a series of divisions a germ cell gives rise to a body or soma and to new germ cells. The latter, and not the body, give rise to the next generation.” (203) It appears that this mechanism is by no means limited to human generation. It is a phenomenon of very wide occurrence in sexually reproductive organisms below man. Alfred Huettner describes this process as it occurs in the roundworm: (204)

Sir Charles Sherrington has a beautiful free-flowing passage describing this situation. Coming as it does from a man whose life was spent largely in medical research and whose reputation was international, his words so eloquently expressed are doubly worth pondering. Nor has recent research required their modification since they were penned. As applied to human beings his statement is still correct. He wrote: (205)

It is therefore clear that these germ cells constitute a very slender thread in the continuity of immortality, for the initial cell (the fertilized ovum) retains its own identity for between two and five doublings (depending upon the species) before differentiated cells begin to appear which can no longer be considered as part of the original germ plasm. These few pure germ cells will continue to replicate themselves in isolation, though at a much slower rate, but for a short interval of time the stream of immortality is entrusted to a tiny handful of cells.

The expert in these matters will not need elaboration of this circumstance but the layman may find it helpful, in visualizing how the ovum provides for its own continuity, to have the following summary statement.

The sperm penetrates the ovum and shortly thereafter the ovum begins to divide into two cells, then each of these divide again and we have four cells. Shortly, there are eight and then sixteen, and so it grows into a ball of cells called a morula. A fluid-filled hollow develops and the whole growing mass assumes the form of a kind of thin-shelled ball like an orange peel without the orange inside. This is the blastocyst stage. The blastocyst then collapses on itself, looking rather like an air-filled ball with a small hole in it that has been stepped on and stays that way. In time, various parts of the structure begin to develop differently and the foundations for the reproductive system begin to emerge in what is called the genital ridge, which is approximately where the rubber ball indented and tended to close up the fold. Meanwhile, the germ cells have kept themselves apart in one place, multiplying slowly. Once the blood vessels and a kind of circulation system is in operation, these germ cells which have still retained their integrity migrate via the vascular system by a form of amoeboid motion towards the area of the genital ridge. When the gonads finally form in this area, they are invaded by the germ cells which then take up residence there. The gonads themselves now begin to develop as testes or ovaries, depending more or less on the chromosomal sex of the original germ cells.

It will be remembered that the presence of the X or Y chromosome determines whether the medulla or the cortex of the gonads will grow at the expense of the alternative and therefore whether testes or ovaries will form. These glands, once the decision is made as to which they shall become, begin to secrete hormones which act upon the maturing fetus to cause the appropriate internal reproductive organs to form, and later the appropriate external genitalia. By full term, the female fetus has its internal reproductive organs (ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, etc.) all essentially complete and supplied with a full quota of oocytes which, one by one, will later mature and be released as fully prepared ova throughout the whole fertile period of the woman’s life.

If one wanted to think in purely biological terms, one might now convert a previous popular observation to read, “the woman is merely the ovum’s way of creating another ovum.” This is so because the seed of the woman perpetuates itself in a very special way - as we shall see in the next chapter.

Now various figures are given for the number of “pure” germ cells (from 16 to 32) after which further cleavage results in the appearance of the first somatic cells. (206) Of Ascaris megalocephala, Alfred Kuhn says that the first somatic cells appear at the fourth cleavage when there are 16 cells present. The experimental evidence is sometimes contradictory but it suggests a basic pattern: the differentiation of mortal cells from immortal cells is made very early in development. (207)

Thus the germ cells do not continue their uninterrupted development for very long. They soon throw off differential cells which signal the development of body tissues. But at the same time they preserve themselves as a reservoir of germ plasm throughout the life of the organism.

The subsequent history of the developing germ plasm in the female is, however, different from that of the male germ plasm. As J. Money and A. A. Ehrhardt observe: (208)

Now this basic fact of the continuity of the germ plasm has been set forth diagrammatically in a number of ways by various authorities since Weismann’s time. In a paper entitled, “The Third Stage in Genetics,” Donald Michie has the following figure showing in a simplified way two opposing views of the fate of the germ plasm from generation to generation. (209) I have modified his drawing slightly in order to make its meaning more self-evident to those who find diagrams difficult.

In Fig. 9 (a) the germ seed gives rise to a body which then gives rise to a germ seed. The latter then gives rise to a second generation body which in turn generates a second generation seed. And so the process goes on indefinitely. The important thing is that in this view the body really is giving rise to the seed. It is a view which was commonly held until the time of Weismann. In Fig. 9 (b) the situation is really quite different, for the initial germ seed gives rise to the next germ seed and to a body, the germ seed and the body thus generated being almost independent entities. This is not quite true and to this extent the diagram is unsatisfactory except in so far as it tends to point up the two different concepts very nicely. It is not quite true in so far as the seed is dependent upon the body to house it.

A more truly representative diagram is that which Sir Alister Hardy presents in his This Living Stream, redrawn as Fig. 10. (210) In this view the initial germ seed gives rise both to the seed of the next generation and to the body. The seed is shown after migration into the body that is to house it.

The next figure is redrawn from an article written by Fischberg and Blackler based strictly on experimental observation. (211) The initial germ plasm multiplies to the 8 cell stage by which time one or two cells have been partially isolated and are shown as solid dots. These cells, in the next stage, double and become effectively isolated. In due time these isolated cells become the gonad germ cells in the mature organism (in the Gall midge).

It may help, finally, to bring this series of figures “home,” as it were, by redrawing an illustration from Fritz Kahn in his Man in Structure and Function, in which the same basic pattern of continuity is transferred to the human context. (212)

Fritz Kahn published his book about 35 years ago and it might be thought that it would now be seriously out of date. In his discussion of this diagram, however, the facts remain essentially as he has described them. His work is still a very useful textbook, and the illustrations are both imaginative and effective for the communication of what is highly complex. He explains his diagram as follows:

It may be difficult to believe that any line of mortal creatures could convey from generation to generation a continuing stream of immortal cells without ultimately corrupting them. But evidently this really is what takes place. C. E. McClung tells us: (213)

But by nature, and if not experimentally interfered with, these germ cells are, as V. H. Mottram put it, “the only physically immortal things” in our bodies. (214)

Again, I would modify this statement slightly by noting that it is really the sex cells in the female line that are “the only physically immortal things.” The statement does, however, show how widely it is recognized that at the very root of our individual existence there is an immortal constituent, the seed of the woman.

Weismann, almost a century ago, in an essay published originally under the title Uber die Ewigheit des Lebens, i.e., “Upon the Eternal Duration of Life,” wrote (as we have already noted, p. 14), “The immortality of the unicellular organism has passed over only to the ova or spermatozoa, the other (cells) must die, and since the body of the individual is chiefly composed of them, it must die also.” Again, I would only modify Weismann’s statement by excluding the spermatozoa.

So the seed of the woman dies with the woman because it is thus robbed of its home, even as seeds die month by month if not fertilized by the sperm, being rejected from the female body and to all intents and purposes killed in the process. In any case they do not die because it is their nature to do so or because they have limited energy. It is, as we have seen, remarkably easy in animals to trigger the seed into mitotic activity and thus to perpetuate itself indefinitely. Once so stimulated, the ovum will under appropriate conditions go on to full term in a viable form. There is considerable controversy, on the other band, as to whether parthenogenesis in this sense has ever occurred in a woman, though there have been a number of claims made by unwed mothers with respect to the birth of supposedly fatherless daughters. (215)

Now all this has a direct bearing upon the present theme. Having been endowed with immortality, Adam and Eve acquired mortality. And, which is significant from a physiological point of view, their offspring inherited this acquired character. We have here therefore a clear case of something which actually happened that, until comparatively recent times, was ruled out as an impossibility. It has been the traditional wisdom among geneticists for about a hundred years that acquired characters are not inherited. Yet here was an acquired character that “passed upon all men” (Rom. 5:12). It seems rather strange to me that no Christian biologist has given much thought to the matter. Indeed, it has taken a man actually opposed to the Christian view to note this unusual circumstance. Sir Gavin de Beer, an outstanding evolutionist in England, when reviewing the book Mankind Evolving by Theodosius Dobzhansky, makes this remark: (216)

To all their descendants, save ONE! And here, if Sir Gavin had taken the thought seriously, is a further great truth which might have provoked him to think even more deeply upon the subject. For it is evident that the acquired character of Eden was indeed transmitted and must therefore have ultimately reached the germ plasm. The only mechanism which will satisfy all the conditions thus laid down in Scripture is one which assumes that the transmission was effected via the male seed only. Luther and Calvin and now Barth have all recognized this fact. De Beer’s comment is therefore not entirely correct.

Now each spermatozoon is a single-celled organism of highly complex structure and form. It is not only the smallest cell in the body but quite possibly also the most complicated in its organization. In its head-piece, it has a nucleus containing the genes, suspended in a pool of surrounding cytoplasm containing a number of minute structures of various kinds called arganelles (i.e., tiny organs), the whole being sheathed in a membrane like a soft shell, and provided with a quite complex tail portion by which a high degree of motility is achieved. Fig. 13 gives a good idea of its complexity.

It is now believed that within the cytoplasm and among the minute particles which are suspended in it, there are certain carriers of hereditary material which have been termed plasmagenes. (217) These cytoplasmic “genes” are distinct from the nuclear genes which hitherto have been assumed the sole carriers of heredity, and they appear to be (unlike the nuclear genes) susceptible to influences outside the cell. Since there is constant interaction between the nucleus and the cytoplasm of each cell it is possible for environmental influences, by this route, to reach the hereditary material and effect modifications in all subsequent generations. It is possible that the fact of the continuous production of mature spermatozoa throughout the adult fertile life of the male may expose them to such influences in a way that the ova are not.

In the male the primordial germ cells are present from the very beginning (as in the female embryo) but the complex free-living organism which is the mature spermatozoon (short-lived though it is) is continuously being manufactured from puberty and throughout adult life by extensive modification of the germ plasm cells. (218) And these mature spermatozoa are produced in the hundreds of millions. This fact may account for the greater accessibility of these cells to influences from the body which manufactures and houses them. And the fact that the spermatozoon actually penetrates into and becomes absorbed in and fused with the ovum makes it a potential pathway into the ova for male body cell influences.

Thus although the woman may have been the first to introduce the fatal poison into her body cells, she did not by that act poison her own seed, but the poison of death does enter through the male seed into the seed of the woman by the fusion of the two. By such a mechanism the poison in Adam’s body may have reached his seed, and via the cytoplasm of the seed the poison is by fusion with the female seed passed on to the embryo.

Now the substance of what we have been discussing in this chapter may be stated as follows. As we trace the history of biological theory with respect to the mechanism of inheritance, we find Lamarck arguing that any animal which responded to the challenges of the environment by developing structures or instincts or chemical responses which gain for it an advantage in the struggle to survive, was in a position to further the chances of survival of its descendants by passing these gains on by inheritance. The key doctrine here was that acquired characters were inherited. It seemed self-evident and necessary that this should be so in view of the apparent progress of life, and it very reasonably accounted for the steady improvement in the breeding of animals of particular interest to man. It only remained therefore to unravel the mechanism whereby acquired characters were transmitted.

It soon became apparent that this obvious “fact” was not true after all. Acquired characters did not seem to be inherited, or if they were, the mechanism was certainly not a simple one. Once this was acknowledged, all kinds of every day illustrations sprang to mind and made the older Lamarckian view seem patently absurd: mutilated parents do not bear mutilated offspring - daughters of Chinese mothers whose feet had been bound from childhood bore normal daughters, circumcised fathers did not beget circumcised sons, the blacksmith could have as many puny infants as anyone else. A new law was therefore announced: “Acquired characters are not inherited.” And all biologists accepted this new law at its face value.

A few biologists with Christian convictions were disturbed by the new “law” because they could see that real problems were created in our understanding of the events which occurred in Eden. Mortality was acquired by man, yet it was inherited. To quote Romans 5:12 again, “Death entered…and passed upon all men.” This was an essential aspect of the Fall of man and his need for redemption. Was the Bible in error?

By the prodigious labors and elegant methods of research of a number of geneticists and microbiologists, the mechanism is now becoming clear. This research begins to show that there are certain conditions under which an acquired character can after all be inherited, not via the nuclear genes but by something analogous to them in the surrounding cytoplasm termed plasmagenes. The resistance to change in the germ plasm is due to the fact that it is not derived from the body cells - cells which are responsive to changes during life. It was this fact that made it so difficult to see how the germ cells could be influenced by what happens to the parents. It is the plasmagenes that respond to influences, not the germ plasm.

But it now appears that although the male germ cells, like the ova, are derived from the germ cells of the parent body and not from the body cells, these male germ cells are susceptible to the subsequent influence of the body cells in a way that the female germ cells are not. The end result is that by this roundabout way some acquired characters, whether hurtful or harmless, seem to be inheritable in mammals through the male seed. The pathway is from body cells to male germ cell cytoplasm, and from the male germ cell cytoplasm to the female seed by fusion at the time of fertilization. And thence these modifications appear in body cells of the resulting offspring both male and female. And these steps are repeated generation after generation so long as the seed of the woman is fertilized by the seed of the man.

But if the seed of the woman could be activated without fertilization by the seed of man, it must be supposed that the result would be the emergence of an individual escaping the mortogenic factor which Adam bequeathed via his seed to all subsequent generations. Such an offspring would recover in his person the original physical immortality with which Adam was endowed at his creation.

In short, to summarize a long and complex chapter, it may be said that the seed of the woman is the only remnant that has retained the original immortality possessed by our first parents. By contrast, the seed of man and the body cells of both the man and the woman have been mortalized. Furthermore, even the seed of the woman is fatally poisoned by fusion with the male seed.

However, this poison affects only that portion of the woman’s seed which will develop into body cells: the remainder of her seed continues to form the immortal stream of germ plasm. Only if an ovum from this germ plasm reservoir can be fertilized by some means not natural to man can a body with the original endowment of potential immortality be recovered again.

Corrections, May 17, 1997. Awaiting Copyright  Permission 2007

Virgin Mary = Ovum

God = Not of Flesh

= Jesus the Christ the Son of God 

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