LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 307 



for they are simply handed down by education and 

 precept. But nevertheless they are handed down to 

 the following generations. 



Although this matter has been considered inciden- 

 tally in the previous pages, it is necessary here once 

 more to summarize the matter, as representing one 

 of the new laws controlling human evolution. Social 

 evolution, indeed, is hardly more than an accumula- 

 tion of acquired characters; but though they are 

 simply acquired and never become a part of the 

 germ plasm, they are none the less surely trans- 

 mitted to different generations by a method of their 

 own, and it is by their development and their trans- 

 mission that the phenomenon which we call social 

 evolution has taken place and through their influ- 

 ence that what we sometimes call the social organ- 

 ism has been developed. Under the influence of 

 acquired characters development can take place with 

 very much greater rapidity than when congenital 

 characters alone are concerned. Hence it is that in 

 the development of the human race acquired char- 

 acters are reinstated as a force of great significance, 

 and as forming the primary factor in human 

 advance. 



From birth to death the human individual is being 

 subjected to the teachings of his environment, and 

 being eminently more receptive than any other ani- 

 mal, the growing child becomes inevitably molded 

 into an adult whose character is dependent more 

 upon the training than upon inheritance. The child 

 may be born with wonderful mental possibilities, 

 but unless he is trained by education his mental 

 power amounts to little. By education his mind 

 becomes yearly more efficient and no one fails to 



