mo LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



interesting parallelisms (as both these terms were indeed chosen to 

 indicate) with the biologic inheritance, and its persistence through 

 heredity. But since the anatomist has demonstrated the organic 

 identity of our species since neolithic times, and the anthropologist 

 also finds our breeds in antiquity, man's heredity is seen to be 

 continuous; whereas his social heritages — his civilisations — have 

 been in change, and are still. In briefest summary, then. Heredity is 

 of Breed, but Heritage is of Civilisation; hence two equally dis- 

 tinctive sciences are required to investigate them. No doubt they are 

 combined in society, like warp and woof; and each may change, 

 for the better or for the worse; indeed, they are ever in interaction, 

 each in its own way. Hence, too, their mutual suggestiveness, even 

 to biological contributions to sociology, and vice versa. At times 

 each has been pushed too far almost to mutual exclusion; hence 

 many exaggerations, biomorphic and anthropomorphic respectively. 

 These may be termed "biologisms" and "sociologisms", each in its 

 own way illegitimate, and to be avoided, as tending to converse 

 errors, and even to mistaken policies. In organic life, our own especi- 

 ally, there are hereditary diseases, though happily but few: whereas 

 the social heritage has ever been more or less complicated with a 

 burden of evils. Indeed, these often seem scarcely less complex than 

 are the good elements of the heritage ; and they are far slower, and 

 as yet more difficult, of treatment than is disease; especially since 

 they may be only too easily mistaken for true progress. In the 

 organic continuity of life, and even in its course, biological "varia- 

 tions" may arise; and in the long run the better are selected towards 

 survival; whence phylogenetic progress, and further ontogenetic 

 perfection of the type. Similarly the social heritage exhibits no small 

 degree of continuity, standardising the given society, and its mem- 

 bers, towards what sociology — ^following and extending the term of 

 law and government — calls Order. This conformity to tradition and 

 type is obviously a condition of social life; and just as we find 

 animal forms apparently fixed from a long past, so obviously are 

 many societies. Yet comparable to organic variability, we likewise 

 find variations on the social level. Not only the organic "sport", 

 but the intellectual, artistic, or social "genius", may and do alike 

 appear in man; but even these latter only count for sociology in 

 the measure of their contributions — preferably, of course, positive 

 — to the social life, the heritage in its movement. For the heritage- 

 bearing society and its socians, as in organic phylogeny and ontogeny 

 too, the vital interest is of no mere past experience, nor of mere 

 continuance into present existence either. Above all, life looks 

 towards the ever-opening future ; and this holds for the society and 

 its members, as it does for the species and its individuals. That 

 abbreviated recapitulation of the organic ancestry — at least in 

 great fundamentals, however modified — ^which is so familiar to the 



