HEREDITY BATESON. 393 



any futile attempt to abolish them. The teaching of biology is per- 

 fectly clear. We are what we are by virtue of our differentiation. 

 The value of civilization has in all ages been doubted. Since, how- 

 ever, the first variations were not strangled in their birth we are 

 launched on that course of variability of which civilization is the con- 

 sequence. We can not go back to homogeneity again, and differentiated 

 we are likely to continue. For a period measures designed to create 

 a spurious homogeneity may be applied. Such attempts will, I an- 

 ticipate, be made when the present unstable social state reaches a 

 climax of instability, which may not be long hence. Their effects 

 can be but evanescent. The instability is due not to inequality, 

 which is inherent and congenital, but rather to the fact that in 

 periods of rapid change, like the present, convection currents are set 

 up such that the elements of the strata get intermixed, and the 

 apparent stratification corresponds only roughly with the genetic. 

 In a few generations under uniform conditions these elements settle 

 in their true levels once more. 



In such equilibrium is content most surely to be expected. To the 

 naturalist the broad lines of solution of the problems of social dis- 

 content are evident. They lie neither in vain dreams of a mystical 

 and disintegrating equality nor in the promotion of that malignant 

 individualism which in older civilizations has threatened mortifica- 

 tion of the humbler organs, but rather in a physiological coordina- 

 tion of the constituent parts of the social organism. The rewards of 

 commerce are grossly out of proportion to those attainable by in- 

 tellect or industry. Even regarded as compensation for a dull life, 

 they far exceed the value of the services rendered to the community. 

 Such disparity is an incident of the abnormally rapid growth of 

 population and is quite indefensible as a permanent social condition. 

 Nevertheless capital, distinguished as a provision for offspring, is 

 a eugenic institution; and unless human instinct undergoes some pro- 

 found and improbable variation abolition of capital means the aboli- 

 tion of effort. But as in the body the power of independent growth 

 of the parts is limited and subordinated to the whole; similarly in 

 the community we may limit the powers of capital, preserving so 

 much inequality of privilege as corresponds with physiological fact. 



At every turn the student of political science is confronted with 

 problems that demand biological knowledge for their solution. Most 

 obviously is this true in regard to education, the criminal law, and 

 all those numerous branches of policy and administration which are 

 directly concerned with the physiological capacities of mankind. 

 Assumptions as to what can be done and what can not be done to 

 modify individuals and races have continually to be made, and the 

 basis of fact on which such decisions are founded can be drawn only 

 from biological study. 



