288 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



Civilization Due to Acquired Charactebs 



A civilized community becomes in this way a 

 series of secondary forces acting upon man. Man 

 inherits a plastic nature which is modified by these 

 secondary conditions until the mental powers of the 

 adult become quite different from what they would 

 be under different artificial conditions. Civilization 

 is thus simply an accumulation of experiences which 

 can be artificially taught, and conditions which can 

 be artificially and intentionally handed on from par- 

 ent to child. The adult must be looked upon as only 

 in part the result of that kind of organic evolution 

 which has characterized the development of the rest 

 of the world. His body has been the result of an 

 evolutionary process similar to that found elsewhere. 

 His instincts also come partly under the same cate- 

 gory, and have likely developed under the same laws 

 as the instincts of other animals. Moreover, his 

 mental capacity must be recognized as due to the 

 same cause, for his mental power is due, as is be- 

 lieved at all events by scientists, to the structure 

 of his brain, and this is something that has been 

 developed by organic evolution, and is a matter of 

 inheritance. But the adult man possesses far more 

 than he inherits by nature, much of which is the 

 result of secondary modifications of his innate 

 nature. He must be looked upon largely as a result 

 of the action of his personal environment upon his 

 plastic organism. Even his body is to a considerable 

 extent due to this environment. All are familiar 

 with the numerous little deformities in the structure 

 of the body of man resulting from peculiar fashions, 

 such as the wearing of tight shoes, etc. These show 



