142 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



pline. This is education, in its broadest sense. The receiver 

 may be indifferent or even unwilling to receive, and the giver 

 commonly takes the initiative, as, for example, in the "uplift- 

 ing" of a "lower" race. Also, while spontaneous imitation 

 carries all the mores indiscriminately, education carries a more 

 or less wisely selected body of mores. It is clear that the 

 former is the more natural, elemental, impersonal, spontaneous, 

 and automatic process; the latter is effective as it succeeds in 

 reproducing the essentials, at least in semblance, of the former, 

 but in comparison it appears artificial. It involves, it has been 

 noted, an antecedent choice or selection from the main body 

 of the mores : we will teach the young certain things, and 

 others we will try to keep from them as long as possible. This 

 choice is supposed to be a reasoned and purposeful one; but 

 such a selection has little of the sureness and severe correct- 

 ness of an automatic selection. 



These evolutionary factors are operative in the life of every 

 society, from the family group to the nation. And they do not 

 stop there. They are effective, on the grand scale, in the life 

 of human society as a whole. There is a world-code that has 

 been in process of formation with the establishment of prox- 

 imity between the nations; for that proximity, brought about 

 by the annihilation of distance, has meant altered conditions 

 of life for many societies; and variations that have been dem- 

 onstrated, under selection, to be expedient, have been trans- 

 mitted until enough mores have come to be held in common 

 by all, or nearly all, to justify the term "international code" 

 or "world-code." Variations around this code, or in departure 

 from it, may now be originated by a whole nation, and sub- 

 mitted for world-wide acceptance or rejection. Slavery, for 

 example, has been rejected, while democracy has widened its 

 range. And of late has stood forth Germany, as champion of 

 a code that is still undergoing the ordeal of selection. These 

 national variations on the world-code cannot be tested up as 



