PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



" Civilisation largely sets aside the harsh but ultimately 

 salutary action of the great law of Natural Selection without 

 providing an efficient substitute for preventing degeneracy. The 

 substitute on which moralists and legislators rely if they think 

 on the matter at all is the cumulative inheritance of the bene- 

 ficial effects of education, training, habits, institutions and so 

 forth the inheritance, in short, of acquired characters, or of 

 the effects of use and disuse" (p. vii). 



" The selective influences by which our present high level has 

 been reached and maintained may well be modified [How 

 much does Mr. Ball mean by that?], but they must not be 

 abandoned or reversed in the rash expectation that State educa- 

 tion, or State feeding of children, or State housing of the poor, 

 or any amount of State socialism or public or private philan- 

 thropy will prove permanently satisfactory substitutes. If 

 ruinous deterioration and other more immediate evils are to be 

 avoided, the race must still be to the swift and the battle to the 

 strong. The healthy Individualism so earnestly championed 

 by Mr. Spencer must be allowed free play" (p. 155). 



What I have said on pp. 53, 54 anticipates the way 

 in which I should meet this argument. Just because 

 it is " not proven " that acquired characteristics are 

 transmitted, we cannot trust for the improvement of 

 the race to the moralisation of stray individuals now 

 (however desirable and necessary that is in itself) : 

 we must reform institutions so that the new in- 

 dividuals shall be born into healthy surroundings. 

 The training process has always to be performed 

 afresh. In the course of his arguments against the 

 Lamarckian doctrine, Mr. Ball has shown how much 

 can be done by education and imitation, apart from 

 heredity, even among the social insects, how very 

 much more among human beings. Of this fact we 

 must make all the use we can. Of course it will 

 make a great difference what kind of natures we 

 have for the very best institutions to work upon. But 

 to get the best natures, can we trust, as Mr. Ball does, 



