342 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



are playing an important part in determining the 

 future of the race. It is not, however, wholly a ques- 

 tion of producing, but one of rearing children that is 

 concerned, and to a considerable extent the smaller 

 numbers of families of the upper classes are compen- 

 sated for by the larger percentage that is reared. At 

 the same time, we must remember that those races 

 and those families that fail to reproduce themselves 

 and leave abundant progeny behind, cannot in any 

 proper sense be called the higher classes. 



5. The new force of social heredity has produced 

 a great change in the condition of evolution, bringing 

 it about that the family and the race that determines 

 the direction of evolution is not necessarily the one 

 that produces the largest number of vigorous off- 

 spring. Through social heredity, a single individual, 

 though leaving no offspring, may turn the direction 

 of evolution, and have more influence upon mankind 

 than another with numerous progeny. Hence, while 

 emphasis should be placed upon reproductive effi- 

 ciency, even greater emphasis needs to be placed 

 upon making the individual's life count, since the 

 influence of the individual upon evolution through 

 his life may be far greater than his infliuence through 

 his offspring. 



6. Eecognizing that the particular phase which civ- 

 ilization has taken has been due to the factors which 

 we have called social heredity, we must reach the sig- 

 nificant conclusion that the guidance and direction of 

 human evolution will in the future be largely in our 

 own hands, as it has been in the past. For the de- 

 velopment of the fundamental instincts upon which 

 society is based we may be dependent upon the laws 

 of organic inheritance. For this we can assume no 



