298 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



that neither of the extreme views is right, and that 

 here as elsewhere the truth is between the two. It 

 seems certain that each person receives by inherit- 

 ance impulses in the direction of both altruism and 

 egoism, as does also the fact that not all individuals 

 receive the same grade of instincts in these direc- 

 tions. In some families the egoistic and in others the 

 altruistic instincts are the more prominent. Just as 

 persons with exceptionally high mental power are, 

 on the average, likely to produce children with large 

 mental development, so it is equally true that those 

 who have especially keen or unusually dulled moral 

 natures seem likely to transmit similar characters 

 to their offspring. These innate moral tendencies 

 would appear to be family attributes, transmitted by 

 organic inheritance, and, if they are to be preserved 

 and increased, it must be by the control of mating 

 and by the selection of individuals. But it is abun- 

 dantly clear that these instincts may be greatly modi- 

 fied by training, that is, by social heredity. It is 

 certain that there is such a thing as an educated con- 

 science. From birth to death each human individ- 

 ual is being subjected to the teachings of his environ- 

 ment, and, being eminently more receptive than any 

 other animal, the growing child is inevitably molded 

 into an adult whose characters are dependent more 

 upon the training than upon the traits that he has 

 inherited. 



General Conclusions 



Eecognizing that civilization has been developed 

 from the human family, and primarily by the action 

 of the ethical nature which binds men together into a 

 unit, we conclude that civilization has been builded 



