io6 A Factor in Evolution 



education, imitation, etc., and the result on physical descent 

 would show in our faces, and even appear in our fossils 

 when they are dug- up long hence by the paleontologists of 

 succeeding a^ons ! 



3. In man it becomes the law of social evolution. 

 *• Weismann and others have shown that the influence of 

 animal intercourse, seen in parental instruction, imitation, 

 gregarious cooperation, etc., is very important. Wallace 

 dwells upon the actual facts which illustrate the ' imitative 

 factor,' as we may call it, in the personal development of 

 young animals. It has been argued that Spencer and 

 others are in error in holding that social progress demands 

 use-inheritance, since the socially acquired actions of a 

 species, notably man, are socially handed down, giving 

 a sort of ' social transmission ' which supplements natural 

 heredity " (from an earlier page). The social ' sport,' the 

 genius, is often the controlling factor in social evolution. 

 He not only sets the direction of future progress, but he 

 may actually lift society at a bound up to a new standard 

 of attainment. 1 



§ 5. Co7tcurrent Determination 



The two ways of securing development in determi- 

 nate directions — the purely extra-organic way of social 

 transmission, and the way by which organic selection in 

 general (both by social and by other ontogenetic accom- 

 modations) secures the fixing of congenital variations, as 

 described above — seem to run parallel.^ Their conjoint 



^ The reader may consult the special developments in the work just cited. 



2 In Social and Ethical Interpretations, §§ ■}^'i, ff., an effort is made to 

 show in detail that the ordinary antithesis between * nature and nurture,' 

 endowment and education, is largely artificial, since tlic two are in the main 

 concurrent in direction. 



