214 Heredity and Social Progress 



conditions which have created a deficit. Deficits end in a 

 moral code, impressing motives of economy and self-asser- 

 tion. 



1 1 . The agents of acquired characters. Imitation is a 

 primitive means of adjustment ; the mechanism of it is 

 inherited by the inner neural body, and affords acquired 

 characters a method of propagation. Fear in weak organ- 

 isms is the very best protection against extinction. It is a 

 natural character, but still very effective in establishment 

 of acquired characters. Reason is a property of the lowliest 

 organisms ; it is in essence a recoil from the dissimilar 

 and an acceptance of the similar. Discipline acts on outer 

 organs of expression, making them so rigid that impulses 

 pass inward or regenerate the primitive organs utilized by 

 acquired characters. 



12. The problem of education is not one of addition. 

 It is wholly a matter of acquiring character. It is a 

 strengthening of the strong where they are weak, a crea- 

 tion of equality which the process of natural differentiation 

 tends to prevent. 



13. Progress is not the making of the strong, but that 

 protection of the weak in men by which differentiation 

 becomes possible. This strengthening of the weak is not 

 final, but must be repeated in each generation with increas- 

 ing care. Give the dwarfed character a surplus, and spon- 

 taneous changes will reorganize society.- The cause of 

 progress lies in the increase of energy which prosperity 

 creates and not in the elimination di^ to adverse condi- 

 tions. Remove the surplus and there is no progress ; re- 

 store it and there is no elimination. The vital point in all 

 progress is the creation of a social surplus. 



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