178 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



permanent value, must persist in some way, either in 

 their consciousness or in their effects, when the organic 

 life of our globe has passed away, or must possess 

 some significance independent of time and space. The 

 question of the existence of human personality outside 

 bodily limitations here becomes a crucial factor, and 

 very deep interest attaches to the scientific labours of 

 those pioneers who are now trying to bring forward 

 acceptable evidence bearing on this problem. 



All through the long aeons of geological time, while 

 evolution has led to higher and yet higher types along 

 many lines of development, this creative impulse has 

 been at work. Down the long centuries of the exist- 

 ence of prehistoric man, race after race has been used 

 in turn to advance the great purpose. Race after race 

 has played its part, and given place to others more 

 capable of going further along the road. Now, when 

 civilization is becoming common to all mankind, the 

 dangers of one race are the peril of all. It is possible 

 that the creative power has got as far as it can by the 

 use of unconscious agents. Further advance may only 

 be possible by conscious selection, and our growing 

 knowledge of heredity, and our ever-strengthening 

 inward impulse to apply it to the betterment of our 

 own race, may be but the manifestation of the great 

 hidden creative Power of the Universe as it takes a 

 new path to turn the obstacles which threaten to block 

 all its old roads of advance. 



What is this impulse towards racial improvement 

 that has been at work among us ; why is it checked 

 at certain stages of its development ; what are these 



