THEORIES OF WEISMANN AND DE VRIES 399 
deprived of their tails, without vielding any evidence that 
the mutilations were inheritable. 
To take one other case that is less superficial, it is gener- 
ally believed that the thirst for alcoholic liquors has been 
transmitted to the children of drunkards, and while Weismann 
admits the possibility of this, he maintains that it is owing 
to the germinal elements being exposed to the influence of 
the alcohol circulating in the blood of the parent or parents; 
and if this be the case it would not be the inheritance of an 
acquired character, but the response of the organism to a 
drug producing directly a variation in the germ-plasm. 
Notwithstanding the well-defined opposition of Weismann, 
the inheritance of acquired characters is still a mooted ques- 
tion. Herbert Spencer argued in favor of it, and during his 
lifetime had many a pointed controversy with Weismann. 
Eimer stands unalterably against Weismann’s position, and 
the Neo-Lamarckians stand for the direct inheritance of use- 
ful variations in bodily structure. The question is still 
undetermined and is open to experimental observation. In 
its present state there are competent observers maintaining 
both sides, but it must be confessed that there is not a single / 
case in which the supposed inheritance of an acquired char- 
acter has stood the test of critical examination. 
The basis of Weismann’s argument is not difficult to 
understand. Acquired characters affect the body-cells, and 
according to his view the latter are simply a vehicle for the 
germinal elements, which are the only things concerned in 
the transmission of hereditary qualities. Inheritance, there- 
fore, must come through alterations in the germ-plasm, and 
not directly through changes in the body-cells. 
Weismann, the Man.—The man who for more than forty 
years has been elaborating this theory (Fig. 114) is still living 
and actively at work in the University of Freiburg. August 
Weismann was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1834. He 
