36 HERBERT SPENCER AND EVOLUTION 



teristics, and he can only hand on those characteristics 

 to his children. Hygiene, education, social institutions, 

 may improve the lot of the individual, but they cannot 

 produce any permanent effect on the race. And many 

 of our apparently most promising reforms may actually 

 do injury to the race, if they result in the multiplication 

 of the unfit at the expense of the fit — fitness and unfitness 

 being innate and not acquired characters. 



But I will not pursue this subject further. If you 

 ask me to point out the way, I am excused from the 

 necessity of doing so, for it was pointed out by Sir 

 Francis Galton in the Herbert Spencer lecture in 1907. 

 It is sufficient if I have made it evident that zoological 

 studies have a human interest and a human application. 

 They are difficult studies, and they do not obviously 

 lead to material prosperity, so they attract but little 

 interest in this country, and I think it is a reproach to 

 us. Perhaps we zoologists are responsible for it, for we 

 are wont to conceal our results in language that is not 

 understanded of the people. I have tried this afternoon 

 to teU some of the most important conclusions of my 

 science in plain language, and hope that I may have 

 attracted your interest. 



I will conclude by saying that, though I have been at 

 trouble to show that some of the most important parts 

 of his Principles of Biology were founded on erroneous 

 data, I recognize with gratitude that the far-reaching 

 importance of biological study was not only appreciated 

 but strenuously advocated to the last by Herbert Spencer. 



Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A. 



