294 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



inheritance. The love of the parents for the chil- 

 dren, as we have earlier noticed, is really the founda- 

 tion stone upon which the human family has devel- 

 oped. But we have also seen that the reason that 

 this becomes so especially keen in the human race is 

 because of the long-continued sojourn of the parents 

 and children together. This is due to the long-con- 

 tinued infancy of the human race, and to this extent 

 it is based upon the organic nature of man, which 

 comes, of course, from his organic inheritance. But 

 there is no question that the keenness of love, and 

 therefore the willingness of the parents to sacrifice 

 their own interests to those of their children, through 

 a long continued period of time is due to the constant 

 association of the individuals together. It is the 

 contact, the social relations of parents and children 

 that develop the parental and the filial love, which is 

 the foundation of the human family. In this way we 

 see that even the fundamental phase of society, the 

 formation of the family, is, while founded indeed 

 upon organic traits, due primarily to the develop- 

 ment of new impulses that come from the teaching 

 of social inheritance. 



The Moral Sense. — The application of moral nature 

 to the affairs of life, the practical side of conscience, 

 is thus dependent upon the environment of the indi- 

 vidual rather than upon his organic inheritance. 

 This is true even to a greater extent than is some- 

 times thought. It is claimed by those who have 

 studied the life of the lower classes that at least three 

 out of every ten criminals might have been saved by 

 simply changing the conditions of their lives. Their 

 inherited nature could certainly not have thus been 

 changed, but the environment changes the relation of 



