HEREDITY AND EUGENICS. pase 
them when they have arisen, the zeal and intelligence of 
biologists are being devoted all over the world to-day. It is 
highly imprudent for outsiders to commit themselves to taking 
sides in the controversies which have arisen. But I think we 
are bound to allow that the weight of authority seems to lie with 
those who seek for the mechanism of variation and of the 
transmission of its results in the germinal region. If this is so, 
then the transmission of the superficial qualities acquired by 
the individual is rendered improbable. This question is by no 
means settled: long debates are conducted with multitudinous 
pro’s and con’s; but at any rate I think that we must not set 
ourselves in opposition to the view that such characters are not 
transmitted, but must face the possibility of all transmission 
being effected by what takes place in the germinal region. 
In that region the situation has been brought to a clear issue by 
Weismann’s application of Natural Selection. According to 
this use of it, the gains or losses of the individual’s outer life 
perish with the individual: the arena of the struggle is the 
germ-plasm. There the variations which occur are preserved 
by elimination of those inferior in power to struggle, and the 
perpetuation of those which gain the victory. This is a 
selection in which the fortunes of an individual life count for 
almost zero: the change is due to processes prolonged over 
centuries, over millions of successions of individuals. 
Allowing that this is the extreme theory, and that some scope 
for influences upon the individual and for the individual’s own 
originality must be incorporated with the theory, still the 
broad impression upon the mind is that the individual withers in 
importance, and that man is a spectator of processes operating 
in recesses beyond his control. This was, I think, the attitude 
towards which we were being driven by Weismannism. Man’s 
intervention in the selecting processes of nature was possible 
only ina small way; something he might do by assisting to 
eliminate forms of life which he did not value, and fostering 
a few that he cared for, as when the waving corn-field 
replaces the Canadian forest ; some slight varying he might 
direct, as in the garden, the greenhouse, and the stockyard. 
But his efforts were watched jealously by Nature ; ever she was 
ready to take advantage of the slightest pause in his industry ; 
to resume possession of the wheatfield by rank grasses and 
weeds, to draw his garden back again to wilderness, and his herds 
to the rougher animals of the prairie, the moor, and the forest. 
It is just when we have come to this point that a new door 
has been opened into Nature, an unexpected instrument for the 
