200 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



cerity of worship, and is regarded as an end in itself. 

 The ceremonials of religion were originally instituted to 

 edify our spiritual natures, to symbolize high ideals. 

 When people follow these ancient rituals not so much 

 out of a desire to contemplate high ideals of character 

 and service, as to look with curiosity upon the entertain- 

 ing ceremony and the fashion of others' attire, the prac- 

 tice becomes hollow and meaningless. Formalism is 

 psychically cheap. It substitutes the outer and the more 

 tangible for the inner and the fleeting. It is capable of 

 being held before the mind without the strain of fresh 

 expense of thought and feeling. It is easily impressed 

 upon the multitude. 54 Professor McDougall sums up the 

 importance of social heredity as follows: 



"The mental constitution of man differs from that of 

 the highest animals chiefly in that man has an indefinitely 

 greater power of learning, of profiting by experience, of 

 acquiring new modes of reaction and adjustment to an 

 immense variety of situations. This superiority of man 

 would seem to be due in the main to his possession of 

 a very large brain, containing a mass of plastic nervous 

 tissue which exceeds in bulk the sum of the innately or- 

 ganized parts and makes up the principal part of the 

 substance of the cerebral hemispheres. This great brain, 

 and the immense capacity for mental adaptation and 

 acquisition implied by it, must have been evolved hand 

 in hand with the development of man's social life, 

 and with that of language, the great agent and pro- 

 moter of social life. For to an individual living apart 

 from any human society, the greater part of this brain 

 and of this capacity for acquisition would be useless 

 and would lie dormant for lack of any store of 



s* Cooley, op. cit., pp. 342-350. 



