ANIMAL EVOLUTION 35 



Molluscs and marine worms and sweet-peas may seem 

 to be remote from human institutions, and it may be 

 objected that conclusions derived from biological studies 

 of this kind cannot be applicable to ourselves. But this 

 objection does not hold good. The phenomena of heredity 

 and variation in mankind, as well as the physiology 

 of man, have been studied in greater detail than in any 

 animal, and we have ample evidence that man is as 

 inexorably subject to the same fundamental laws of 

 existence as are animals. And since many of the most 

 important of human institutions are closely bound up 

 with these fundamental laws, when we attempt by legis- 

 lation or influence or education to vary our institutions 

 in the hope of improving our present condition and trans- 

 mitting the improvement to our successors, it is imperative 

 that we should act in accordance with and not contrary to 

 those laws. 



You will probably be inclined to the opinion that 

 the conclusions to which zoology has arrived are not 

 sufficiently secure to warrant an attempt to apply them 

 to affairs of state. Be it so. But it is a fact commonly 

 overlooked that ideas derived from biological science are, 

 being applied to the affairs of the state, and that some 

 who would hurry on the march of progress wish, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, to apply them still further. 

 But these ideas are founded on the conclusions reached 

 fifty years ago, and science has moved far forward since 

 then. It is to be feared that much that still passes for 

 ' progress ' is really regress, for it is founded on mistaken 

 conceptions of the operations of Nature. 



Vague as some of our conceptions still are of the 

 operation of the forces underlying vital phenomena, 

 I think that we are clear on one point, which I have 

 already emphasized, that man, in common with his 

 fellow creatures, has a past history which he cannot 

 divest himself of. And not only man as a species, but 

 man as an individual, for he is born with certain charac- 



