social evolution and social heredity 201 



"Social Heredity" and the "Envieonment" 



Having thus gained a comprehensive idea of what 

 is meant by social heredity, we may ask a final ques- 

 tion — whether this force is anything more than the 

 long recognized ** influence of the environment." In 

 a certain sense they are identical, since social hered- 

 ity is surely the influence produced upon the individ- 

 ual by the various forces acting upon him during his 

 life. But in another sense they are different, and, 

 as we have considered it, social heredity is not the 

 same force that has formerly been recognized as the 

 action of the environment. As the environment has 

 been thought of in earlier discussions of evolution it 

 has been looked upon as a set of forces which not 

 only modify an animal during its life but may pro- 

 duce changes in it which are transferred to the 

 organic nature of the individual so as to be trans- 

 mitted by organic inheritance. The evolutionary 

 theories of Lamarck and the later Neo-Lamarckians 

 were founded ujDon the idea that the environment 

 thus produced modifications in organisms that then 

 became part of their organic structure. These ideas 

 have been pretty thoroughly discredited by the grow- 

 ing recognition of the non-inheritance of acquired 

 characters. With the abandonment of these views 

 the influence of the environment has been given less 

 and less weight until it has been almost abandoned. 

 To explain any phase of evolution by appealing to 

 the action of the environment is now regarded as 

 quite unsatisfactory. That the environment has 

 some indirect influence in shaping evolution is about 

 all that the more recent views of heredity have been 

 willing to admit, and it has been appealed to less and 



