292 social heredity and social evolution 



Social and Organic Inheritance in Man 



Organic Heredity. — We now come to the specific 

 question of what man owes to organic and what to 

 social heredity. We must recognize that man pos- 

 sesses a body of great value. An upright position, 

 a mobile hand, a large brain have all been of the 

 greatest service in developing his civilization. All 

 such characters he, of course, receives through the 

 action of the same laws as those by which animals 

 have all received their physical characters. Man also 

 possesses unusual mental plasticity, a character evi- 

 dently depending upon his large brain. That civil- 

 ization is dependent upon these mental powers is 

 self-evident and hence, so far as social evolution is 

 based upon the possession of highly developed mental 

 powers, it has been dependent upon organic inherit- 

 ance, which has given man a large brain and 

 unmatched mental ability. 



But we have learned that human social evolu- 

 tion has been primarily founded upon the ethical 

 nature rather than the mental, and the question of 

 the inheritance of the ethical instincts is thus of 

 special significance. 



Moral Codes. — It is evident that moral codes are the 

 result of social inheritance. We have learned how 

 the moral codes of the different races of men have 

 been undergoing a slow but constant change, and that 

 they are to a large extent artificial products. Codes 

 have arisen as the result of the association of men 

 into complex groups, a condition that has demanded 

 the development of moral codes to make social life a 

 possibility. This is abundantly proved by the great 

 variation in the codes of morals of different races. 



