30 Heredity and Child Culture 



even if we are not responsible for their organic 

 heritage. We may greatly modify the social 

 inheritance of our offspring, even after they are 

 born, though we may not modify their organic 

 inheritance ; and in determining what they will 

 become and what they will do in the world, the 

 social inheritance commonly counts much more 

 than the organic inheritance. ***** The 

 heritage of the race is determined more by 

 what men do than by what they inherit from 

 their parents by organic inheritance. ***** 

 Organic heredity simply gives us certain pow- 

 ers, while social heredity determines what we 

 shall do with those powers. Man is molded into 

 a social individual by social forces, and whether 

 or not he fits into our society depends more 

 upon the social forces at work than upon the 

 powers that nature gave him. Even though he 

 have an inheritance weak both mentally and 

 morally, an individual may be molded into a 

 fairly good member of the social organism if he 

 is surrounded by proper environment; but if 

 he is reared in the wrong environment, tend- 

 ing to produce a wrong social inheritance, he 



