336 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



ture of civilization. Customs of the races have 

 slowly developed, and these, through education, mold 

 this machine, from the time of birth to the time of 

 adult life. This produces a change in the mind of 

 man far more rapidly than is possible by organic 

 evolution. The chief factors which separate the 

 European from the Bushman are not, then, in his 

 innate, but in his acquired characteristics. We do 

 not mean by this that there are no innate differences 

 between the Bushman and the European. The dif- 

 ferences in inherited mental power of the two are 

 perhaps great; but the chief differences between 

 them, in adult life, are in the mental powers which 

 each has acquired rather than in the mental attri- 

 butes which each has inherited. Civilization is thus 

 a heritage, handed down from father to child ; but it 

 is like property passed on from generation to gen- 

 eration, and not like that organic inheritance by 

 which the parent transmits to his child the color of 

 his hair, or his eyes, or his stature, or his mental 

 power and moral sense. 



Hence, social evolution is something quite differ- 

 ent from organic evolution. On the one hand, we 

 have a phenomenon resulting from the slowly modi- 

 fying structure of the life substance; on the other 

 hand, we have a development of purely artificial 

 factors, capable of accumulation and of being handed 

 on from generation to generation without any mold- 

 ing of the characters which are transmitted by inher- 

 itance. The great lesson to be drawn is that social 

 heredity is under the action of laws totally different 

 from those of organic heredity. We may deny that 

 acquired characteristics play any part in the proc- 

 ess of organic evolution, but it is clear enough that 



