Social Inheritance 31 



will be an undesirable member of society, no 

 matter what may have been his innate powers. 

 ***** The real stimulus which has acted 

 upon man to produce his wonderful develop- 

 ment in contrast to animals has been the util- 

 ization of the new force of social inheritance." 

 These hopeful and stimulating words may 

 serve as added warning not to put too much 

 stress upon biological generalizations derived 

 exclusively from plant and animal life. What 

 is often attributed to organic inheritance may, 

 in the last analysis, be largely due to social 

 inheritance. Do the children of thieves, 

 drunkards, and prostitutes turn out badly prin- 

 cipally because of birth, or from living in the 

 company and wdth the example of degenerates ? 

 It may be that some individual developments 

 attributed to organic heredity are, to a large ex- 

 tent really due to environment. This thought 

 might be applied to two classic examples in 

 heredity. The children of the Jukes' family, 

 we must remember, were brought up by the 

 Jukes, and the Edwards' family were sur- 



