Contusion. 385 



in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is daily 

 thrusting us into closer contacts and more mutually-dependent 

 relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, 

 the due peopling of the globe, and the raising of all its habitable 

 parts into the highest state of culture ; after having brought all 

 processes for the satisfaction of human wants to perfection ; after 

 having, at the same time, developed the intellect into complete 

 competency for its work, and the feelings into complete fitness 

 for social life after having done all this, the pressure of popula- 

 tion, as it gradually finishes its work, must gradually bring itself 

 to an end.' l 



CONCLUSION. 



WE now sum up all that has been said, in order to get a general 

 view of our subject There are two ways of reaching a conclusion : 

 either we may restrict ourselves to the facts, or we may strive to 

 attach them to some probable hypothesis ; we may limit ourselves 

 to experience ; or, starting from experience, we may endeavour to 

 reach beyond it In the first case, heredity is regarded as a law 

 of life, of which the cause is the partial identity of the con- 

 stituent elements of the organism in parent and in child. In 

 the second case, it appears to us as a fragment of a far broader 

 law, a law of the universe, and its cause is to be sought for in 

 universal mechanism. We will examine the question according 

 to both of these methods. 



Let us first look at it simply from the stand-point of experience. 

 To this end we need but review what has already been said in the 

 course of this work. 



As regards specific characteristics, heredity comes before us with 

 the evidence of an axiom, for it is without exception. In the 

 physical, as in the moral order, every animal necessarily inherits 

 the characteristics of its species. An animal which, per impossibile, 



1 Spencer's Biology, 372376. 



