ace. After all, that does not mean that
individuals exist and are worth Nature's while merely in order to see
the germ-plasm on its way. To say that the individual exists for the
race is to say that he, and, as we shall see, pre-eminently she, exist
for future individuals; and that is not a destiny to be despised of any.
Let us attempt to state simply but accurately what biologists mean in
regarding the individual as primarily the host and servant of something
called the germ-plasm.

When the processes of development and of reproduction are closely
scrutinized, we find evidence which, together with the conclusions based
thereon, was first effectively stated by August Weismann, of Freiburg,
in his famous little book, "The Germ-Plasm."[1] The marvellous cells
from which new individuals are formed must no longer be regarded, at any
rate in the higher animals and plants, as formerly parts of the parent
individuals. On the contrary, we have to accept, at least in general and
as substantially revealing to us the true nature of the individual, the
doctrine of the "continuity of the germ-plasm," which teaches that the
race proper is a potentially immortal sequence of living germ-cells,
from which at intervals there are developed bodies or individuals, the
business and _raison d'etre_ of which, whatever such individuals as
ourselves may come to suppose, is primarily to provide a shelter for the
germ-plasm, and nourishment and air, until such time as it shall produce
another individual for itself, to serve the same function. This is
another way of saying what will often be said in the following
pages--that the individual is meant by Nature to be a parent.

We shall later see that this great truth by no means involves the
condemnation of spinsterhood, but since it determines not only the
physiology, but also the psychology, of the individual, and especially
of woman, it will guide us to a right appreciation of the dangers and
the right direction of spinsterhood, and the means whereby it may be
made a blessing to self and to others. This must be said lest the reader
should be deterred by the unquestionably true assertion that the
individual is meant by Nature to be a parent, and has no excuse for
existence in Nature's eyes except as a parent. If we are to regard the
body as a trustee of the germ-plasm, it is evident that the body which
carries the germ-plasm with itself to the grave--the "immortality of the
germ-plasm" being only