32 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



individuals have the power of learning something 

 from their surroundings. Surely, a dog can be 

 taught by his trainer, and surely too, which is more 

 to the point, a dog, an elephant, or a monkey learns 

 some things from natural surroundings. So far 

 as a monkey in his troop of relatives learns from 

 them how to behave under common conditions of 

 life, so far does he come under the influence of 

 social heredity. Certain it is too that the monkey, 

 by following his mother, is inevitably led into habits 

 of life that materially modify his structure. If we 

 could imagine a monkey brought up in a country 

 without trees, he would become a very different adult 

 from that which his brother had become reared 

 in a forest. With an identical organic inheritance 

 the two animals would become quite different adults. 

 So far then as the animal is modified by his sur- 

 roundings, to this extent he benefits by the prin- 

 ciple of social heredity. Where we find animals liv- 

 ing in societies we may therefore assume that a social 

 inheritance is a possibility. 



But as we go to the animals with less intelligence 

 we find the power of learning disappearing. The 

 lower orders of animals do not learn from expe- 

 rience, and certainly never teach each other. We 

 may believe that monkeys are perhaps modified by 

 their associations with each other, and that the indi- 

 viduals of a herd of antelopes are somewhat differ- 

 ent from what they would be if they lived a solitary 

 life. But it is certainly doubtful whether the indi- 

 vidual members of a school of fish are at all modified 

 by their living together, and most certainly social 

 heredity plays no part in the development of a swarm 

 of flies. Among a vast proportion of the lower ani- 



