18 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



or to master enemies. He is poorly protected from 

 the weather, for his skin is naked; his powers of 

 flight are feeble compared with many other animals ; 

 his body, seemingly built for an arboreal life, is 

 poorly adapted to life on the ground, and the upright 

 position he has assumed entails many points of 

 weakness. His senses are not so keen as those of 

 some animals. His children are weak and helpless 

 for a longer period than any other animal. Thus in 

 many respects he is not particularly well built as an 

 animal, and other lower animals are in these points 

 his superior. 



But when we turn to the question of man as a 

 social unit we find a very different story, since no 

 animal is his equal in any one of the above men- 

 tioned respects. No animal compares with him in 

 strength when he uses the machines that he makes ; 

 no animal is so well protected from the weather as 

 he is with his artificial clothing, his houses, and his 

 fires ; no animal can see as far as his telescope or so 

 minutely as his microscope, nor can any hear as far 

 as his telephone, and none can compare with him in 

 the ability to rear and maintain his offspring on the 

 earth. In every and all respects he is the superior 

 of animals when the totality of human life is con- 

 sidered, but he is superior not from his powers as an 

 animal but from the powers given him by society. 



After all, it is civilization that makes the man, and 

 not his bones, muscles, nor even his mental attri- 

 butes. Of course intelligence is a fundamental 

 factor, since without it civilization could not have 

 developed. But it is really the powers that come 

 from society that put man upon a plane so much 

 above animals. Perhaps this may be best realized 



