()4 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



branch of science, and under what circumstances, and I must 

 leave it to each of you, if sufficiently interested, to stvidy them 

 for yourselyes from the original sources. 



APPLICATION TO THE HUMAN RACE. 



The wide-spread agitation of a problem of this nature, 

 however technical or recondite it may be, lying as it does on 

 the very ocean bed of science, cannot help sooner or later 

 making itself felt at the surface and producing its normal 

 influence upon the great practical questions of the moral and 

 social world. And the nature of this influence, fortunately 

 for us, is some indication of the truth or falsity of the views 

 defended. Just as the mathematician knows, when his cal- 

 culations lead him to just and rational results that his 

 assumption was a true one, and when they lead to a series 

 of negations and absurdities, that it was a false one, so we 

 may expect that if the assumption of the non-transmissibility 

 of acquired characters is a sound one the practical conclusions 

 that flow from it bearing upon the affairs of life will harmo- 

 nize with the best thought on the development of the human 

 race ; and conversely, if its application to practical life con- 

 flicts with such best thought and with the facts of history and 

 of social progress we are justified in the inference that it is an 

 unwarranted assumption. What do we find ? 



The highl}' artificial character of what we call civilization 

 is a fact which I have for many years sought to enforce by a 

 variety of illustrations. That nothing like it could ever result 

 from the natural flow of the forces that have combined to pro- 

 duce it is too obvious to require explanation, and that human 

 advancement in general is exclusively the result of the exer- 

 cise of man's intellectual power in the artificial direction of 

 the raw forces of nature into channels of human advantage, 



