ADAPTATION AND INHERITANCE KAMMERER. 439 



at least the female, was protected against toxins and not when the 

 male alone possessed this peculiarity. The doubt was therefore not 

 excluded that the transmission may have taken place not by true 

 inheritance of the undeveloped germ, but later through the placenta, 

 or even by way of the milk of the mother, while nursing. The latter 

 possibihty appeared all the more reasonable, since analagous experi- 

 ment by Lustig upon chickens protected against abrin in whicli both 

 of the questioned sources of error were ehminated yielded com- 

 pletely negative results. But final positive proof was furnished by 

 experiments made by Gloy and Charrin, who, by the use of rabbits and 

 the toxin produced by the pus-producing Bacillus pyocyaneus, 

 achieved that which Ehrlich and his followers had been unable to do, 

 namely, the transmission of the resistance by immunity — in this case 

 against a disease-producing poison produced by bacteria — through the 

 male alone. 



This wonderful new result, together with all those previously 

 attained, opens an entirely new path for the improvement of our 

 race, the purifymg and strengthening of all humanity — a more 

 beautiful and worthy method than that advanced by fanatic race 

 enthusiasts, which is based upon the relentless struggle for existence, 

 through race hatred and selection of races, which doubtless are thor- 

 oughly distasteful to many. This will never save human society 

 from degeneration; it will not qualify man for greater efforts or 

 higher aims. These must be acquired solely and alone by our own 

 labor toward a well-determined end. If acquired characters, impres- 

 sions of the individual life, can, as a general thing, be inherited, 

 the works and words of men undoubtedly belong with them. Thus 

 viewed, each act, even each word, has an evolutionary bearing. 

 The acquiring of new characters may prove an inherited burden if 

 unhealthy conditions and overindulgence, or lack in all things, or 

 bad passions ruin our body, and therefore our reproductive cells, 

 so that even good germs become strangled in it. But the active 

 striving for definite, favorable, new qualities will in a like manner 

 yield the ])ower to transmit the capabilities which wo have acquired, 

 the activities which we have busily practiced, the overcoming of trials 

 and illness — will leave somewhere their impress upon our children or 

 our children's children. Even if ever so much weakened; even if 

 only in disposition or tendency, not in completed form; even if com- 

 pletely concealed for generations, some reflection of that which we 

 have been and what we have done must be transmitted to our 

 descendants. We know, unfortunately, all too little about this, be- 

 cause well-planned breeding experiments are mipossible in man, and 

 because statistical investigation, which we offered in then* place, is 

 frequently full of error. We are therefore forced to draw our con- 

 clusions from the better-known case of the plants and animals; and 



