4 8 



DARWINISM AXD POLITICS. 



transmit experience quite independently of the 

 continuity of race, so that even if a family 

 or a race dies out altogether, its intellectual and 

 moral acquirements and culture are not neces- 

 sarily lost to the world. A n individual or a 

 nation may d ^ more for mankind by handing 

 on i rlpa'; nnrl a o re.nr. exampl e than~"J5y~ieaying 

 numerous^offspring. Darwin himself fully 

 admits this : 



jyn high 



" A man who was not impelled by any deep instinctive 

 feeling to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was 

 roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his 

 example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and 

 would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admira- 

 tion, w^ i-.TJnri-.t- j-| 1P c rir, fm- rpnrp good to his tribe than b y 

 begetting offspring with a tendency to in herit hi 

 character." {Descent of Man, p. 132.) 

 "" lr Ureal, lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions, 

 great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the pro- 

 gress _of mankind in a far higher degree by their wors"fh *an 

 by le avin g a n umerous progen y." (ib. p. 136.) 



What Darwin says here of the greatest of men 

 is also in a less degree true of men generally. 

 Most certainly we inherit from those who have 

 cone before us : but the " inheritance " in 

 any advanced civilisation is far more in the 

 intellectual and moral environment in the 



