IMPORTANCE OF THE INQUIRY. 3 



modified individual? Does individual improve- 

 ment transmit itself to descendants independ- 

 ently of personal teaching and example ? Have 

 artificially produced changes of structure or habit 

 any inherent tendency to become congenitally 

 transmissible and to be converted in time into 

 fixed traits of constitution or character ? Can the 

 philanthropist rely on such a tendency as a hope- 

 ful factor in the evolution of mankind ? the only 

 sound and stable basis of a higher and happier 

 state of things being, as he knows or ought to 



know, the innate and constitutionally-fixed im- 



t 

 provement of the race as a whole. If acquired 



modifications are impressed on the offspring and 

 on the race, the systematic moral training of 

 individuals will in time produce a constitutionally 

 moral race, and we may hope to improve mankind 

 even in defiance of the unnatural selection by which 

 a spurious but highly popular philanthropy would 

 systematically favour the survival of the unfittest 



B 2 



