EVOLUTION 117 



icate will take the place of a college entrance 

 examination. As educators our task is limited 

 only by the supply of human beings. The 

 automobile may drive out the horse, but the 

 educator, whatever the community may think 

 of him, has come to stay. 



If, however, the content of the mind is of 

 the nature of acquired traits and hence not 

 heritable, the mental machinery by which this 

 content is handled is, in part at least, heredi- 

 tary. The inheritances of feeble-mindedness, 

 insanity, and other defects, as well as of favor- 

 able traits, such as predisposition to music 

 and so forth, are too well established as ger- 

 minal features to admit of dispute. They re- 

 semble a more stable background on which 

 our somewhat plastic natures rest, and, though 

 their well-being is essential to our success, 

 they of themselves afford only that founda- 

 tion on which such a success may be built. 

 Thus our personality springs from a heredi- 

 tary soil, but the direction of its growth is 

 more a matter of environment than of ger- 

 minal determination. Although the Lamarck- 

 ian hypothesis seems to have no assured place 

 as a real factor in the process of organic evo- 

 lution, if we widen our conception of this 



