In this respect, independent sociological experiments and investigations have arrived at the same conclusions as Weismann. Prof. John R. Commons by careful study, reached the following conclusions: That 1.75 per cent of the population of the United States are congenital defectives; that 3.25 per cent are induced defectives, that is, they have not inherited their deficiency; that 2 per cent are possessed of genius and will make their way under the hardest conditions; that 2 per cent are below the Aryan brain level; and that the remaining 91 per cent are normal persons who are neither good nor bad, brilliant nor stupid, criminal nor virtuous, and whose future is entirely decided by the environment which surrounds them during the first fifteen years of their life. Herman Whittaker, a magazine contributor, states that during eight years in Canada 2,000 boys taken from the London slums by Dr. Barnado passed under his observation on a farm colony. And although most of them had served terms in jail, not more than one per cent reverted to their own former habits, or the habits of their parents. When it is charged that a transformed social environment will not solve the problem presented by the slum, the sweatshop and the jail, as Socialists assert, we are justified in nailing the statement as false, and a libel on human nature. And in so doing, we are not sentimental dreamers of dreams, crying for the moon, but rigid analysts and investigators, and, as Lassalle once proudly said, “We have behind us the science and the learning of our day.” V. DE VRIES’ “MUTATION.” Orthodoxy received the most stunning blow ever given it, at the hands of Charles Darwin, and it is ever on the lookout for an opportunity to make reprisals. It is only necessary for some fledgling to challenge Darwin’s theory of the origin of coral reefs and offer some grotesque assumption in its place, and it is at once announced from a thousand pulpits that Darwinism,--that enemy of God and man--is dead. Hugo DeVries, however, could hardly be called a fledgling, and the supporters of Darwin had real cause for apprehension, it would seem, when the rumor gained ground that no less a person than the Amsterdam professor had overthrown Darwin’s theory, and substituted one of his own. Alas, this latest “death of Darwinism” was no more fatal than its numerous predecessors, as the following quotation from DeVries himself will show: “My work claims to be in full accord with the principles laid down by Darwin.” And again, “To Darwin was reserved the task of bringing the theory of common descent to its present high rank in scientific and social philosophy.” And, “Notwithstanding all these apparently unsurmountable difficulties, (absence of experimental evidence since gathered) Darwin discovered the great principle which rules the evolution of organisms. It is the principle of natural selection. It is the sifting out of all organisms of minor worth through the struggle for life.”