Heredity in Man. 345 



steadily evolving in the race that type of character upon 

 which these [altruistic] forces act most readily and 

 efficiently ; that is to say, it is evolving religious character 

 in the first instance, and intellectual character only as a 

 secondary product in association with it. The race would, 

 in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious, the 

 winning sections being those in which, cceteris paribus, this 

 type of character is most fully developed." I cannot 

 agree with this, for it is difficult to see in what way 

 elimination is at work so as to produce any such result. 

 All the arguments Mr. Kidd uses to show that the average 

 intellectual development of successive generations amongst 

 ourselves does not show any tendency to rise above that of 

 the generations immediately preceding them, apply also 

 with equal force to the average moral and religious develop- 

 ment. The power of conscience and what we may term, 

 somewhat loosely perhaps, the religious impulse, do not, 

 I imagine, stand at a higher average level to-day than 

 at the time of the Reformation. But I do believe, and 

 trust, that the moral and religious environment has under- 

 gone evolution, and that the individual conscience and 

 religious impulse have to-day freer play than under the 

 narrower and more cramping conditions of the past. 



It would seem, in fine, that if mental evolution in man 

 be manifested rather in the progressive advance of human 

 achievement than in progressive increment of human 

 faculty; if the developmental process have been trans- 

 ferred from the individuals to their environment ; if it be 

 rather the intellectual and moral edifice that is undergoing 

 evolution, than the human builders that contribute in each 

 generation a few more stones to take a permanent place in 

 its fabric ; if there be thus no conclusive evidence that 

 faculty is improving, but rather the opposite ; if all this 

 be so, then it would seem that the ground is cut away 



