Heredity in Man. 341 



is one not of internal power, but of external advantage. 

 The child born in a civilized land is not likely as such 

 to be superior to one born among barbarians ; and the 

 difference which ensues between the acts of the two 

 children will be caused, so far as we know, solely by 

 the pressure of external circumstances ; by which I mean 

 the surrounding opinions, knowledge, associations, in a 

 word, the entire mental atmosphere in which the two 

 children are respectively nurtured." No doubt the case 

 is here overstated. It would probably be more correct to 

 say that the differences in natural capacity between the 

 civilized and barbarian infant are due to natural selection ; 

 the rest being due to "the mental atmosphere." And 

 since, on our view, natural selection is a constantly 

 diminishing factor in the evolution of civilized man, it 

 follows that the innate differences are of constantly 

 diminishing value. 



Huxley,* writing in 1863, says of man that " he alone 

 possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and 

 rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his 

 existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the 

 experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessa- 

 tion of every individual life in other animals." Further 

 quotations to a like effect might easily be collected. Prof. 

 Weismann t himself clearly saw the bearing of these facts 

 on the Lamarckian controversy, and in one of his most 

 luminous essays clearly indicates how man, " availing 

 himself of tradition is able to seize upon the acquire- 

 ments of his ancestors at the point where they left them." 

 The matter was at about the same time very ably dealt 

 with by Prof. Eitchie in his " Darwinism and Politics," 



* " Man's Place in Nature." See " Collected Essays," vol. vii. pp. 155, 156. 

 t "Thoughts upon the Musical Sense in Animals and Man" (1889), 

 Essays, vol. ii. pp. 50, ," 1 . 



