300 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



human race has been wholly the result of the new 

 force of social inheritance. 



Our final conclusion to the general question as 

 to the relation of man to the two types of heredity, 

 is thus brie3y as follows : To his organic inheritance 

 mankind owes his mental powers, his physical 

 powers, his instincts toward a social life, and the 

 instincts toward self-sacrifice, which make him will- 

 ing to yield to authority and to demand government. 

 It is his organic inheritance that has forced him into 

 association with other men, that has led toward social 

 evolution. But the structures that he has builded 

 upon these foundation stones have not been builded 

 by organic but by social inheritance. The social 

 organism itself is wholly the result of social inherit- 

 ance, for which organic inheritance has furnished 

 only the foundation. Society is a superstructure, 

 built by social inheritance upon a foundation laid by 

 organic inheritance. If we want to get a picture of 

 what man would have been from his organic inherit- 

 ance alone, we have only to imagine an individual 

 brought up alone in nature, without contact with 

 any other human being. He would have the same 

 inherited powers as now but would lack the social 

 inheritance. That he would be little more than a 

 cunning brute seems apparent enough ; and thus we 

 see that man is really separated from animals 

 primarily by his social rather than by his organic 

 inheritance. That any social evolution at all was 

 possible has been due to the physical, mental, and 

 moral nature which man has inherited by organic 

 heredity ; but the form and nature of the actual evo- 

 lution that has taken place has been determined by 

 social heredity. 



Unlverttty 



of (uj 



*&, ToreirtB ^J 



