Man's Apartness 225 



they accumulate interest. By control of "nurture," 

 which includes all manner of environing influences, 

 man can determine the degree of unfolding of a 

 hereditary bud, and can even, if it be an undesirable 

 quality, ensure that it remains more or less dormant. 



It is a "biologism" to underestimate the power of 

 "nurture" in determining the expression of heredi- 

 tary "nature," and it is another to forget the im- 

 portance of the external heritage in which man can 

 register racial gains apart from any germ-plasm. 

 What is only adumbrated in the animal kingdom has 

 come to be of paramount importance to man. 



The recoil of many religious minds from the Dar- 

 winian view of man is partly because it has become 

 wrapped up with ways of regarding man which 

 suffer from false simplicity; but another reason is 

 to be found in the somewhat too easy-going way in 

 which it has been assumed that the factors which seem 

 approximately adequate in the animal world will 

 likewise serve in the kingdom of man. It is plain that 

 man became at an early stage more or less aware of 

 the history behind him, and that he has insisted on 

 taking part in his evolution to a degree far more 

 marked than is exhibited by even the highest animals. 

 Man has, for instance, insisted on throwing off the 

 yoke of Natural Selection, and has suffered in the 

 dilemmas of civilization for doing so without sub- 

 stituting sufficiently testing modes of rational and 

 social selection. In modern times the idea of pur- 

 posively controlling not only individual development 



