22 Heredity and Social Progress 



character solely for their own advantage, not 

 only would the majority share it with their 

 children, but social custom and morality would 

 force them to admit their children to some of 

 its advantages. What changes, then, would 

 this better food and longer childhood effect in 

 the new generation? An increased nutrition 

 creates more energy, and this energy will be 

 used to develop the natural qualities more fully 

 than earlier conditions permitted. A longer 

 childhood will have the same effect. Chil- 

 dren play instead of work, and the incipient 

 qualities which might fail to develop in a 

 shorter childhood would now become promi- 

 nent characters and elements in determining 

 the activities of the child. When this child, 

 becoming a man, chooses his vocation, he will 

 not accept the discipline or the occupation of 

 his father, or so live as to develop his acquired 

 characters. The old discipline will be dis- 

 tasteful to him in proportion as his increased 

 energy and longer period of childhood have 

 differentiated his inclinations from those of 

 the parent. He will, therefore, have a strong 

 impetus to move into a new world or to seek 



