1 6 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



biological science, heredity preserves and trans- 

 mits the physical, mental, and moral accumula- 

 tions of the past as surely and manifestly as a 

 parent passes on to his children the fortune 

 which he has acquired. 



The teaching of Weismann is theoretically very 

 different ; but when applied to the life of the indi- 

 vidual and to society much of its antagonism to 

 Spencer's doctrine disappears. Weismann began 

 his inaugural lecture as Pro-Rector of the Univer- 

 sity of Freiburg in 1883 by asserting the reality of 

 heredity with much positiveness and amplitude, 

 and by accepting the statement of Hackel regard- 

 ing it, that reproduction is ** an overgrowth of the 

 individual." ^ He denied that acquired character- 

 istics are transmitted, however, and insisted that 

 variability is the result of organic changes in the 

 reproductive cells, which changes are the result 

 chiefly of the fortuitous combinations of certain 

 elements in the germ-cells. He concedes, how- 

 ever, that during formative periods of the indi- 

 vidual, environment may affect the germ-cells 

 directly. Thus the fact that short-sightedness is 

 increasing he also would doubtless account for by 

 heredity, but, instead of saying that short-sighted- 

 ness became hereditary when first acquired, he 



1 Essays on Heredity, Weismann, p. 72. 



