84 Physical Heredity and Social Transmission 



as the individual sport is in biological progress. As a 

 matter of fact, however, the analogy from ' sports * which 

 Professor Cope makes does not strictly hold. For the 

 social sport, the genius, is sometimes just the controlling 

 factor in social evolution. And this is another proof that 

 the means of transmission of intelligent adaptations is not 

 physical heredity alone, but that they are socially handed 

 down. It is difficult to see what Professor Cope means 

 by saying that I 'admit and deny Weismannism,' for I 

 have never discussed Weismannism at all. I believe in 

 the Neo-Darwinian position plus some way of finding why 

 variations count in what seem to be determinate directions ; 

 and for this latter the way now suggested appears better 

 than the Lamarckian way. With many of the biologists 

 {e.g.. Professor Minot) I see no proof of Weismannism 

 (and protest mildly against being sorted with Mr. Benjamin 

 Kidd !) ; yet I have no competence for such purely bio- 

 logical speculations as those which deal in plasms ! 



§ 2. Progressive Evolution 



Second, the question as to how evolution can be made 

 'progressive.' Professor Cope thinks only by the theory 

 of ' lapsed intelligence ' or ' inherited habit ' ; for admitting 

 that the intelligence makes selections, then they must be 

 inherited, in order that the progress of evolution may set the 

 way the intelligence selects. But suppose we admit intelli- 

 gent selection (even in the way Professor Cope believes), 

 still there are two influences at work to keep the direction 

 which the intelligence selects apart from the supposed 

 direct inheritance. There is that of social handing down by 

 tradition, etc., the social transmission which has been above 

 spoken of ; and besides there is the survival by natural 



