The Origin of Adaptive Movements 59 



seems to be about as fixed a thing as moral qualities are 

 capable of being, much more so than the level of individual 

 endowment. This latter seems to be capricious or varia- 

 ble, while the former proceeds by a regular movement and 

 with a massive front. It would seem, therefore, that intel- 

 lectual and moral progress is gradual improvement, through 

 improved relationships on the part of the individuals to one 

 another ; a matter of social accommodation, rather than of 

 direct natural inheritance on the part of individuals. It is 

 only a rare individual whose heredity enables him to break 

 through the lines of social tissue and imprint his personality 

 upon the social movement. And in that case the only 

 explanation of him is that he is a variation, not that he 

 inherited his intellectual or moral power. Furthermore, I 

 think the actual growth of the individual in intellectual 

 stature and moral attainment can be traced in the main to 

 certain of the elements of his social milieu, allowing always 

 a balance of variation in the direction in which he finally 

 excels. 



So strong does the case seem for the social heredity 

 view in this matter of intellectual and moral progress that 

 I may suggest an hypothesis which may not stand in court, 

 but which seems interesting. May not the rise of the 

 social life be justified from the point of view of a second 

 utility in addition to that of its utility in the struggle for 

 existence as ordinarily understood, the second utility, i.e., of 

 giving to each generation the attainments of the past which 

 physical heredity is inadequate to transmit ? Whether we 

 admit Lamarckism or confine ourselves to Darwinism, I 

 suppose we may safely accept Galton's law of Regres- 

 sion and Weismann's principle of Panmixia in some form. 

 Now as social life advances we find the beginning of the 



