WEISMANN'S THEORY OF HEREDITY 63 



win or Lamarck. This position held the field 

 almost alone, until Weismann fired his open- 

 ing gun in 1883. He founded (3) the Neo- 

 Darwinian school which repudiates altogether 

 the Lamarckian factor of the hereditary trans- 

 mission of acquired characters, and maintains 

 that Darwin's theory is able to dispense with 

 Lamarckian ideas of use and disuse. 



As Weismann is the storm center of the 

 controversy we will now examine his theory. 



In 1883 Weismann became the pro-Rector of 

 the University of Freiburg and in the hall of 

 the University, in June of that year, he publicly 

 delivered his inaugural lecture "On Heredity." 

 This lecture is generally regarded as the first 

 broadside in that war which filled with its 

 reverberations the scientific magazines of the 

 world for the next thirteen years. As one 

 writer aptly says, "The warring scientists 

 splashed like irate cuttle-fishes in clouds of 

 their own ink." About 1896 however, the public 

 grew tired of the never-ending flood of biolog- 

 ical lore on what looked to the lay mind like 

 an insoluble problem. The editors, with their 

 fingers on the public pulse, cried, "A plague 

 on both your houses," and ^ent the savants 

 to seek in their laboratories the victories de- 

 nied to their pens. 

 As a matter of fact however, the coming 



