242 Heredity and Environment 



effects of good environment or good training ever change the ger- 

 minal constitution. The influences of environment and education 

 affect only the development of the individual and not the consti- 

 tution of the race, and consequently such influences are temporary 

 in effect and must be repeated generation after generation. 



Social versus Germinal Inheritance- — But though the effects of 

 environment and training are not inherited, the environment and 

 training and experience of former generations are handed down 

 to later generations through custom, tradition, history. We do 

 not inherit through the germ cells the effects on our ancestors of 

 their training and environment, but we do inherit, in the property 

 sense of that word, their environment, customs, institutions. In 

 short the experiences and accomplishments of past generations 

 are not inherited through the germ cells but are inherited through 

 society. In this sense "we are the heirs of all the ages." 



Because of this social inheritance the extrinsic conditions of life 

 continue to grow more complex age after age, while our inherited 

 natures remain unchanged. All moralists, all religions, have rec- 

 ognized the very general experience among men of a sense of im- 

 perfection and of disharmony with social and ethical standards. 

 Huxley held that the spirit of ethics was opposed to the spirit of 

 evolution. Metchnikoff finds these disharmonies due to the 

 survival of bestial instincts in man. Galton finds the sense of sin 

 to be due to the fact that the development of our inherited nature 

 has not kept pace with the development of our moral civilization. 

 Our psychical, social and moral environment has come to us from 

 the past with ever-increasing increments, every age standing on 

 the shoulders of the preceding one. The aspirations, impulses, 

 responsibilities of modern life have become enormous and our 

 inherited natures and abilities have not essentially improved. So- 

 cial heredity has outrun germinal heredity and the intellectual, 

 social and moral responsibilities of our times are too great for 

 many men. Civilization is a strenuous affair, with impulses and 

 compulsions which are difficult for the primitive man to fulfil, and 

 many of us are hereditarily primitive men. The frequent result 



