222 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



demanding reform. But it is unthinking enthusiasm 

 which binds the masses together, filling them with 

 blind confidence in their leader, and a willingness to 

 follow him in every turn. Intelligence formulates 

 legislation, but legislation is powerless unless backed 

 by popular support. Legislation follows public opin- 

 ion, rarely leads it, and is helpless in the face of 

 national impulses. Nations are led by their feelings, 

 not their intellects. Indeed, too often laws check 

 instead of lead in national progress. The law pro- 

 tected the slave, and to-day protects many a criminal. 

 Advance has demanded and still demands the over- 

 riding of the law by the force of public feeling. Laws 

 and legislation are the results, not the causes of evo- 

 lution. Parliaments do not make social conditions, 

 but these make the Parliaments. 



Most certainly intelligence has been a necessary 

 factor in the advance of civilization, so necessary 

 indeed that it may be a mistake to place it secondary. 

 But while reason may point out the best direction for 

 advance, it is by appealing to the instinctive side of 

 human nature that mankind in general is influenced 

 to follow the direction pointed out. Every page of 

 history tells us of crimes determined by impulse; 

 every page tells us that while intelligence guides 

 civilization it does so by gaining control of the emo- 

 tions of the masses. History has been more under 

 the immediate domination of the instinctive than the 

 intellectual nature. Civilization has been brought to 

 its successively higher stages through instinct. But 

 since there are two fundamental instincts in man, 

 the egoistic and the altruistic, we are brought next 

 to the question as to which of these two has produced 

 the development of civilization. 



