162 GENERAL BIOLOGY 



The sex-cells are therefore present at birth in each person, and no 

 one can either change or add anything to them, unless, again it be 

 merely the food and drink he takes that may or may not nourish such 

 sex-cell properly. 



This means, then, that just as with Paramoecia, each and every 

 one of us cannot obtain from our parents one more particle of physical, 

 emotional, or mental ability than our parents may have had, because we 

 get only what was present in the egg-cell of our mothers and the sperm- 

 cell of our fathers. 



It means further, that when we go back even twenty-five genera- 

 tions, considering our two parents, four grand-parents, eight great- 

 grand-parents, etc., we are related in actual blood-relationship to more 

 people than there are in the world at the present: time. It means that 

 just as Paramoecia are really their grand-parents and all their ancestors 

 in one, so we are also actually and truly our own ancestors in so far as 

 our sex-cells are concerned. 



An actual living particle of every one of our forefathers is really 

 present in each one of us. It means that the entire animal world, in- 

 cluding the human family, by constant intermingling of chromosomes, 

 is always tending toward an average, so that no matter how many cen- 

 turies elapse there is no real individual physical or biological progress 

 possible. Always will the next succeeding generation, or at least the 

 next after that, have some sex-cells in their bodies that will again pro- 

 duce an average being. 



This sex-bridge which connects every human being with every 

 other human being in this way, is sometimes referred to as the Weis- 

 mannian bridge. It is this bridge which is both the hope of an oppressed 

 people and the despair to those who would change human nature from 

 what it is. We can build only upon instincts ; upon human desires and 

 upon wishes which afre ours at birth, though we may develop such in- 

 stincts and desires, bur* no actual change; in human nature can possibly 

 ever come into existence. Human nature is the same now as it has ever 

 been and always must be, until some method be obtained by which 

 we can tell in advance by looking at a chromosome, what good and 

 bad characteristics such chromosome contains, and then be able to de- 

 stroy the bad therein. This means that we are aeons and aeons removed 

 from any solution to our eugenic problem on a truly scientific basis. 

 Even then, were we able to accomplish this practically impossible task, 

 we should still have to evolve some plan by which we could see the 

 egg and the sperm before they unite, a task again practically impossible 

 until new human beings can be grown in the laboratory. 



Professor Weismann also demonstrated to the scientific world that 

 the germ-plasm early separates from that part which is to become the 

 outer portion of the body and which is called the somatoplasm. 



The Abbott Mendel has proved that no matter how much inter- 



