Me Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
original announcement, the most important single contribution to the 
understanding of these processes has been made by the leader of the 
Neo-Darwinians, Weismann. To him is due the conception of the con- 
tinuity of the germ plasm, and the corrollary from this that body char- 
acters acquired in a single generation cannot be inherited. In other 
words, the germinal substance is carried from parent to offspring with- 
out interruption, and the variations which appear in the offspring are 
not inherited from the parent unless they are of such a nature that the 
germinal substance can carry them on. Thus an extra finger would be 
inherited, in all probability, but a bent one, due to an accident, would 
not be. The importance of Weismannism lies in this, that it is the 
foundation for the studies in genetics and eugenics which have occupied 
the center of the biological stage in this country and elsewhere for the 
last twenty years. To these subjects the active German investigators 
of the present time have contributed little. This fact should not min- 
imize the contribution of Weismann, but, nevertheless, it does serve to 
explain to a certain degree the lack of German appreciation of the other 
factors of evolution, such as mutation, which are now known to be of 
the greatest importance in producing new species or races. German 
scholars are not now taking an active part in the modern studies of 
genetics; rather they explain most evolutionary phenomena on the basis 
of natural selection, and the German national philosophy is likewise 
based upon the acceptance of natural selection applied without modifi- 
cation to human life and society. 
To the mind of most German biologist-philosophers, struggle is the 
rule among: all the different groups of organisms, human groups in- 
cluded. Through all the ages that mankind has been developing, he 
owes his progress to the same factors that influence the evolution of 
other groups of animals and especially to the factor of natural selection. 
Selection is accomplished as the result of a bitter struggle for existence 
as ruthless in its outcome in the case of man as in that of beetles or 
snails or the beasts of the field. It follows that war is necessary that 
the best of the world’s peoples may overcome their weaker neighbors 
and demonstrate their own superiority. The following paragraph from 
Kellogg explanatory of the German views helps to set before us the 
implicit Teutonic reliance in selection and in the irresistible consequences 
of the struggle for existence. 
“This struggle not only must go on, for that is the natural law, 
put it should go on, so that this natural law may work out in its cruel, 
inevitable way the salvation of the species. By its salvation is meant 
its desirable natural evolution. That human group which is in the most 
advanced evolutionary stage as regards internal organization and form 
of social relationship is best, and should, for the sake of the species, 
