494 



ZOOLOGY 



Social in- 

 heritance 



The begin- 

 nings of 

 history 



generations during the rest of man's existence. Legis- 

 lative enactments, political disturbances, wars, all the 

 chief materials of historic research, are secondary to 

 these psychological phenomena. Through "social in- 

 heritance," whereby the thoughts and experiences of 

 one generation are made known to those following, the 

 thinker becomes the dynamic force in social evolution. 

 It is because of this fact that progress is possible and 

 inevitable, and that the future cannot be accurately 

 predicted from the past. In spite of the continuity 

 of the germ plasm, the sameness of the molecular 

 composition of the human stuff, mankind has learned 

 how to break his bounds and set forth on a journey to 

 which he sees no end. 



6. When did history begin ? In one sense, with the 

 first germ of life ; but we are concerned with a more 

 limited point of view. The ancient man of the Stone 

 Age lived in the caves of France and Spain for many 

 thousand years, without appreciable progress. The 

 emergence of new ideas, the discovery of new methods, 

 additions to his knowledge of the world, were all so few 

 and rare that he could hardly have had any sense of 

 progress. At any given time he was probably unaware 

 of any important change in human affairs, and quite 

 without any suspicion of the fact that he possessed a 

 mind capable of dealing with complex systems of 

 thought and managing miraculous machines. He had 

 no history, in our sense, - - much as the moon, within 

 the period of human observation, may be said to have 

 no history. True history begins with events suffi- 

 ciently important to alter the status of human affairs, 

 and especially when these follow each other fast enough 

 to give a sense of progress, to arouse the expectation of 

 a future different from the past. According to this 



