i62 WHAT EVOLUTION IS 



When we ask ourselves how im- 

 portant natural selection is in human 

 affairs, and whether man's life pro- 

 gresses with no show of the inheritance 

 of acquired characters, we pass im- 

 imediately into a situation where every- 

 thing that the biologist has taught 

 seems to be contradicted. At every 

 step human society seems to have 

 gone forward by the inheritance of 

 daily acquisitions and all our humane 

 institutions, charities, and the like cry 

 out against such an ideal as natural 

 selection. This reversal of affairs is, 

 however, merely apparent. 



Every scheme in evolution, whether 

 it be Lamarckian or Darwinian in its 

 tendencies, turns on the transmission 

 of traits, on heredity, and when we 

 inquire what and how man inherits, 

 we find him as peculiar in this respect 

 as he is in others. A child may in- 

 herit, for instance, a book from its 



