While it is undoubtedly true that much in Weismann’s position lacks experimental demonstration, it is equally true that when the heat of the discussion somewhat subsided, his theories were well to the fore, and they have since secured a wide acceptance among competent authorities. It is hardly to be expected that his two greatest critics, Spencer and Haeckel, would look with much favor on a theory the acceptance of which would make necessary the re-writing of those many volumes which constitute their lifework. Lankester, himself no mean authority, in translating Haeckel’s “History of Creation,” feels constrained to say in the preface, “I feel it due to myself to state that I do not agree with him as to a very large part of his views on classification, and as to his belief in the necessity of assuming the ‘transmissibility of acquired characters.’ Readers who have gained an interest in these questions from the brief statements of the present work must, without assuming that Professor Haeckel’s judgment is final, go on to study for themselves the works of Weismann and others which are mentioned with perfect fairness in these pages.” And Joseph McCabe, the translator of his “Riddle of the Universe,” and “Last Words on Evolution,” has this to say in his introduction to the latter, written two years ago, “To closer students, who are at times impatient of the Lamarckian phraseology of Haeckel--to all, in fact, who would like to see how the same evolutionary truths are expressed without reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters,--I may take the opportunity to say that I have translated for the same publishers, Professor Guenther’s “Darwinism and the Problems of Life,” which will shortly be in their hands.” It must be admitted that the older view is much less favorable to the Socialist position in sociology than the later theory of Weismann. It is a matter of some satisfaction that so great a critic as Romanes concedes the feasibility of Weismann’s theory while rejecting some of the conclusions which he draws from it. “If Weismann’s theory is true,” says Prof. David Starr-Jordan, “the whole literature of sociology will have to be rewritten!” And another writer insisted that Weismann had reopened the case for Socialism. If it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions forced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their children by heredity, until in a few generations they became fixed characters, the hopes of Socialists for a regenerated society would be much more difficult to realize. In that case these unfortunate creatures would continue to act in the same discouraging way for several generations, no matter how their environment had been transformed by the corporate action of society. This much at any rate, Weismann has done for us, he has scientifically destroyed that lie.