CHAPTER XV 



THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY 



Many important truths are forced upon us by a con- 

 sideration of the foregoing facts — truths which sooner 

 or later cannot fail to affect our social life — and a 

 rapid review of these may fittingly bring our task to 

 a close. The first, and perhaps the greatest lesson 

 of heredity is that the individual man is much less 

 the arbiter of his own destinies than his pride would 

 have him believe. Born to a heritage of physical 

 and mental capacity, of instincts and sentiments that 

 he has the power to alter only in a limited degree, he 

 may be said to be the creature of circumstances, the 

 sport of fate. He is a waif and stray upon the ocean 

 of life, driven hither and thither by currents over 

 which he has no control, and whose existence for the 

 most part he does not even suspect. All philoso- 

 phical and religious systems are faulty which attribute 



