TABOO AND GENETICS 35 



in a fashion which seems amazing to us now, 

 though common enough thirty years ago. It 

 was not a wild hypothesis in 1888, its real date, 

 but its repeated repubhcation (in the original 

 and in the works of other writers who accepted 

 it as authoritative) since 1903 has done much to 

 discredit sociology with biologists and, what is 

 more serious, to muddle ideas about sex and 

 society. 



In 1903, Weismann's theory of the continuity 

 of the germplasm was ten years old. De Vries' 

 experiments in variation and Mendel's re- 

 discovered work on plant hybridization had 

 hopelessly undermined the older notion that the 

 evolution or progress of species has taken place 

 through the inheritance of acquired characters 

 — that is, that the individuals developed or 

 adapted themselves to suit their surroundings 

 and that these body-modifications were inherited 

 by their offspring. As pointed out in Chapter I, 

 biologists have accepted Weismann's theory 

 of a continuous germplasm, and that this germ- 

 plasm, not the body, is the carrier of inheritance. 

 Nobody has so far produced evidence of any 

 trace of any biological mechanism whereby 

 development of part of the body — say the biceps 

 of the brain — of the individual could possibly 

 produce such a specific modification of the 

 germplasm he carries as to result in the inheri- 

 tance of a similar development by his offspring. 



