Introduction. 33 



of the effects of culture from generation to generation. 

 Quite apart from any question as to the hereditary 

 transmission of acquired characters, we have in this 

 intellectual transmission of acquired experience a 

 means of accumulative cultivation quite beyond our 

 powers to estimate. For, unlike all other cases where 

 we recognize the great influence of individual use or 

 practice in augmenting congenital " faculties " (such 

 as in the athlete, pianist, &c.), in this case the effects of 

 special cultivation do not end with the individual life, 

 but are carried on and on through successive genera- 

 tions ad infinitum. Hence, a civilized man inherits 

 mentally, if not physically, the effects of culture for 

 ages past, and this in whatever direction he may choose 

 to profit therefrom. Moreover — and I deem this 

 an immensely important addition — in this unique 

 department of purely intellectual transmission, a 

 kind of non-physical natural selection is perpetually 

 engaged in producing the best results. For here 

 a struggle for existence is constantly taking place 

 among '• ideas," " methods," and so forth, in what 

 may be termed a psychological environment. The 

 less fit are superseded by the more fit, and this not 

 only in the mind of the individual, but, through lan- 

 guage and literature, still more in the mind of the race. 

 "A Newton, a La Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley," 

 would all alike have been impossible, but for a pre- 

 viously prolonged course of mental evolution due to the 

 selection principle operating in the region of mathe- 

 matics, by means of continuous survivals of the best 

 products in successive generations. And, of course, 

 the same remark applies to art in all its branches ^ 



^ In Prof. Lloyd Morgan's Animal Life and Intelligeme there is an 

 II. 1) 



