112 Heredity and Social Progress 



least, through only a slight evolution. The 

 real developing body that through which all 

 the adjustment to the outer world is made 

 leaves no progeny, because its germs are en- 

 closed and isolated. 



This reasoning, though different from that of 

 Professor Weismann, comes practically to the 

 same conclusion. All the changes through 

 which organisms go, because of their form and 

 contact with the outer world, have little or no 

 effect on the fertilized germ, because the body 

 of which it is a part has not participated in 

 the development through which the parent 

 organism has gone. This, as I view it, is not 

 because the germ plasm is not capable of 

 change, but because the body from which it 

 arises has not undergone change. So far as 

 it has been affected by the changes through 

 which the organism has gone, they have been 

 disadvantageous and not beneficial. Could the 

 inner germs of the two parents have been 

 united, the result might have been different, 

 for then the effect of individual experience on 

 sex germs might have been tested. The con- 

 tinuity of the germ plasm, although a fact, may 



