TRADITION AND HEEEDITY 455 



from the favoured type in any direction are cut off. When organic 

 organization supersedes segmentary organization the whole 

 position changes. It is no longer necessary that a peculiar 

 tradition should be strictly maintained demanding a certain type 

 of mental organization. There is favoured a tradition allowing 

 of the fullest division of labour which not only permits but even 

 encourages various types of innate mental capacity. Various 

 forms of intellectual and emotional capacity thus find a place 

 which would otherwise have gone under. But there are two sides 

 to the picture ; though artists and philosophers may survive, 

 even if they do not exactly flourish, the feeble-minded survive 

 also. 



12. The selection of mental characters within the third period 

 demands further attention. We have commented upon the 

 incompatibility between group selection and the selection of 

 individuals in the earlier periods. Favourable individual develop- 

 ments may not survive because they are not in harmony with 

 the type necessary to maintain the group. Group selection was 

 active in the earlier part of the third period, and resulted in the 

 evolution of higher types. Later group selection took rather 

 a different form, but though it allowed the survival of variations 

 from the favoured type, it did not altogether cease. There was, 

 however, apparently little tendency towards further evolution of 

 groups as a whole ; but germinal changes took place accord- 

 ing as to whether circumstances allowed the survival of more 

 departures in an upward or in a downward direction. We may 

 glance at the results of lethal and of reproductive selection. The 

 average germinal constitution of a race may be profoundly 

 changed by the operation of factors that we may place under the 

 heading of lethal factors, though they do not always operate by 

 elimination. In a civilized country with its complicated machinery 

 of social organization, the government may adopt a policy which 

 ** greatly favours certain types and discourages others ; apparently 

 chance happenings may so turn the course of events as to produce 

 the same results. Thus the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 

 drove out of France men who undoubtedly differed in their innate 

 mental constitution from the average ; so too did the setting up 

 of the Inquisition in Spain. The bad management of the liberal 

 movement in Germany in 1848 resulted in the setting up of a 

 regime as a result of which a certain type of German, to whom 



