296 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



while his social inheritance determines for him what 

 is right. While the code of morals may differ in 

 accordance with the man's surroundings, the impulse 

 which urges the individual to follow the code of 

 morals under which he has been brought up, is im- 

 perative in all races. Is this moral sense, or con- 

 science, wholly the result of social inheritance, or is 

 it, in part, at all events, due to organic inheritance! 

 The impulse to obey what we think is right and to 

 refrain from that which we think is wrong seems to 

 be a part of our nature and not wholly due to edu- 

 cation. If so, it is subject to the law of organic evo- 

 lution, similar to that which has regulated animals. 

 Up to this point there has been no special diffi- 

 culty in determining whether social or organic inher- 

 itance is concerned in the transmission of human 

 traits. But we now come to the first question that 

 presents a real puzzle. The question whether the 

 moral sense itself is wholly a matter of inherited 

 traits, or whether it is due to training, is by no means 

 so easily answered as some of the other questions. 

 Is this moral sense, this conscience, a matter of 

 organic inheritance alone, or is it in a measure, 

 perhaps to a considerable degree, or even wholly, 

 a matter of training! We have noted in a previous 

 chapter that there are some reasons for believing 

 that conscience is in part a matter of training, and 

 hence of social inheritance. To some thinkers, how- 

 ever, this is radically wrong, and conscience, they 

 say, must be looked upon as an innate inheritance 

 of mankind. Those who have fastened their atten- 

 tion most fixedly upon the laws of organic inherit- 

 ance as they worked them out experimentally in 

 animals, are inclined to insist that it is organic in- 



