parent, cannot be transmitted at all." (Vol. I, p. 273.) In
conclusion, Weismann writes: "But at all events we have gained this
much, that the only facts which appear to directly prove a
transmission of acquired characters have been refuted, and that the
only firm foundation on which this hypothesis has been hitherto based
has been destroyed."(Vol. I, p. 461.)

Thus we see how far the theory of heredity has been pushed by the
great scientific investigators of the present age. We have no longer
any right to believe in the old oft-refuted hypothesis which assumes
that each individual organism produces germ-cells afresh again and
again and transmits all its powers developed and acquired by the
parents; but, on the contrary, we have come to know to-day that
parents are nothing but mere channels through which these germ-plasms
or germ-cells manifest their peculiar tendencies and powers which
existed in them from the very beginning. The main point is that the
germs are not created by the parents, but that they existed in
previous generations.

Now, what are those germs like? Wherefrom do they acquire these
tendencies, these peculiarities? That is another very difficult
problem. Dr. Weismann and his followers say that these peculiarities
are gained or inherited "from the common stock," but what that common
stock is they do not explain. Where is that common stock and why will
certain germs acquire certain tendencies and other germs retain other
peculiarities? What regulates them? These questions are not solved. So
far we have gathered from Dr. Weismann's explanation that the parents
are not the creators of the germs but, on the contrary, that the germs
existed before the birth of the body, before the growth of the body,
in previous generations, or in the common stock of the universe. The