122 Mind and Body 



consciousness as a factor in evolution requires a Neo- 

 Lamarckian theory of heredity I am not at all in accord. 

 Instead of finding with Professor Cope that the emphasis of 

 conscious function in evolution makes it necessary to rec- 

 ognize the Lamarckian factor, I think the facts point just 

 the other way.^ As soon as there is much development of 

 mind, the gregarious or social life begins ; and in it we have 

 a new way of transmitting the acquisitions of one genera- 

 tion to another, which tends to supersede the action — if 

 it exists — of physical heredity in such transmission. This 

 transmission by ' Social Heredity ' (as we have called the 

 individual's acquisitions from society through imitation, 

 instruction, etc.) is so universal a fact with higher ani- 

 mals that we may reasonably say at once that the argu- 

 ments for Neo-Lamarckism drawn by Mr. Spencer and 

 others from the phenomena of human progress, at least, 

 are completely neutralized by it. And there are facts 

 which show that the same state of things descends below 

 man. 



It is very probable, so far as the early life of the child 

 may be taken as indicating the factors of evolution, that 

 the main function of consciousness is to enable him to 

 learn things which physical heredity fails to transmit ; and 

 with the child the fact that consciousness is the essential 

 means of all his learning is correlated with the other fact 

 that the child is the very creature for which physical he- 

 redity gives few congenital functions. It is in this field 

 only that I venture to speak with assurance ; but the 

 recognition of this influence has been reached by Weis- 

 mann, LI. Morgan, and others on the purely biological side. 



The instinctive equipment of the lower animals is 



1 See Chap. IV., above. 



