76 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



of drink. Even disease is being attacked and driven 

 across the border ; the microbe is going the way of 

 the great auk and the dodo, and the probability of 

 human life is on the increase. While the advantages 

 of past civilisation fell to the few, our advantages fall, 

 nay, are forced, upon the many. 



Are these conducive to Racial as well as to Individual 

 Well-being ? 



But those scientific men who have given much 

 attention to the study of life in its widest manifesta- 

 tions in plants, in animals and in man himself, have, 

 with great show of unanimity, come to a conclusion 

 which appears to indicate that, although we may im- 

 prove an individual during his or her lifetime, both in 

 physical capacity or mental and moral power, this 

 improvement is not transmitted in appreciable degree 

 to their offspring, who have therefore to begin again 

 in their lives just where the parents began in theirs. 

 This teaching strongly indicates that parents cannot 

 pass on to their offspring in any but a most limited 

 degree the improvements they themselves have made 

 in their own physical or mental condition, in the same 

 way that they can bequeath to them the purses they 

 have filled. 



If these conclusions, however, are correct, the action 

 of healthy surroundings will never by itself produce a 



