310 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



All such individuals from the standpoint of organic 

 evolution have been total failures. If human evolu- 

 tion were of the same type as that of animals, they 

 would have had no influence upon posterity. With 

 animals the individual influences the race only 

 through his offspring, and he has no influence unless 

 he leave a numerous progeny. 



■N"ew Forces of Progress — Clearly, then, human evolu- 

 tion is not to be compared with organic evolution, 

 for there are other intelligible forces that lead it on 

 toward progress besides the inexorable elimination 

 of the unfit. Progress in mankind may be brought 

 about by deliberate intention, by intelligent guiding 

 of events, by a conscious modifying and controlling of 

 the environment, and by the improvement of the edu- 

 cation imparted to the growing minds of the children, 

 so that each generation may be in a little better 

 position than the last. Social heredity may, in 

 short, be intentionally and consciously modified, and 

 the social heritage thus brought into a higher and 

 higher plane without the necessity of a rigid ex- 

 termination of the unfit as its central feature. The 

 ethical nature, though it does preserve the unfit, is 

 not necessarily leading to degradation, since a new 

 force tending toward social progress has made its 

 appearance. In social evolution, which comprises 

 the real progress of the human race, natural selec- 

 tion is no longer the sine qua non of progress, what- 

 ever may have been the case concerning the evolution 

 of animals. 



The fact is that in the development of the human 

 race a new goal has appeared toward which the race 

 is progressing. Evolution no longer seems to be 

 aimed toward producing better animals, or more 



