CHAPTER XI 



SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 



We may now return to the question raised and 

 partly answered in an earlier chapter as to whether 

 human evolution has been based upon organic or 

 social heredity, and hence to what extent it has been 

 dependent upon the same laws that have guided the 

 evolution of the rest of the animal kingdom and to 

 what extent upon new laws of its own. That evolu- 

 tion must have been founded upon heredity is self- 

 evident, since this is the only force that enables one 

 generation to receive characters from its parents 

 and to pass them on to the next. Moreover, it has 

 become evident from the study of the last quarter 

 century that the evolution of animals below man has 

 been due to the laws of organic inheritance. Since 

 the lowest animals seem to learn nothing from expe- 

 rience, it follows that whatever characters they 

 possess must have been transmitted to them at birth 

 by inheritance. Among the higher animals below 

 man there seems to be some capability of learning 

 from experience, giving a possibility of a slight 

 amount of social inheritance. But this is so slight 

 that it cannot have any considerable effect upon the 

 evolution of life. "With man, however, this capacity 

 of learning by being taught is so great as to consti- 

 tute a large factor in his life. Social evolution has 

 evidently been the result not wholly of organic inher- 

 itance but in considerable part of social heredity. 



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