SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 291 



close of the Dark Ages of this Aryan people, as the 

 modern nations arose from the barbarian fragments, 

 the civilization of the advancing races uniformly 

 emerged from their towns and cities. It was not 

 until these towns and cities were organized and 

 began to grow in influence and power that mankind 

 really emerged from the Dark Ages into the age of 

 civilization. 



A city is certainly not a part of the organic inher- 

 itance of man. If a lot of individuals could be 

 removed from their parents at birth and develop 

 without contact with cities and towns, it is certain 

 that they would not, as the ants do, organize the 

 social customs of their parents. The communities of 

 New York, London, and Peking are quite different 

 from each other; but the differences are surely not 

 ingrafted into the nature of their inhabitants in such 

 a way that they will develop in the children inde- 

 pendently of environment. The child is simply born 

 with certain social instincts impelling him to asso- 

 ciate with his fellows, and with a plastic nature 

 capable of being molded in an infinite variety of 

 directions. As long as individuals are placed in the 

 same environment they will be generally molded in 

 much the same manner. A million of children grow- 

 ing up in a similar environment will become quite 

 alike as adults ; but their characters will be alike, not 

 because they have inherited them from common 

 ancestors, but because they have been imprinted upon 

 the plastic natures of the individuals by a similar 

 environment. Civilization is thus a purely artificial 

 product external to human nature. 



