24 Heredity, Variation and Genius 



they are recent. The domesticated animal loses 

 acquired characters when it is turned wild, revert- 

 ing gradually through generations towards the 

 savage type suiting its ruder environment ; gains 

 of domestic culture, being useless, are not in- 

 herited, having no survival-value do not survive ; 

 they tend to the elimination of the creatures hurt 

 rather than helped by the possession of them and 

 to the restoration of the structural form better 

 fitted to survive without them — of the natural 

 equilibrium that is in the life of relation between 

 organism and environment. In process of degra- 

 dation as of development the law of adaptive 

 response to the external conditions of life rules 

 more or less evidently. In like notable manner 

 the moral virtues of the human race, being late 

 and loose conquests of culture, still need the con- 

 stant support and nourishment of a suitable social 

 medium ; they are easily effaced in uncivilized 

 surroundings, where indeed they would be not 

 merely useless but an incommodity or positive 

 disservice to their possessors.* Among a tribe of 

 low savages a life moulded on the Sermon on the 



* Noteworthy is it how loose-knit to character and easily 

 undone are the altruistic acquisitions in comparison with the 

 self-regarding instincts ; pride, vanity, envy, emulation, and 

 the like passions can outlive the moral virtues lasting longer 

 and stronger sometimes than the love of life. Witness, for 

 | example, the case of a lady dying of cancer who was wretchedly 

 unhappy until she got a nurse who could do her hair in the 

 usual fashionable and extravagantly towzled manner, when 



