102 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



inherent in the Christian system of ethics. The 

 first was the conception of the equality of all men, 

 fundamental alike in the Christian religion and in 

 all the ideals of the democratic movement in 

 Western history. The second was the conception 

 that the mind of the child in each generation is 

 like a blank page upon which good or evil training 

 produces indelible results, this being also a root 

 conception of Christian ethics. 



To both these ideas, basal in Western thought 

 for centuries, the science which Darwin ex- 

 pounded ran directly counter. It was based 

 on struggle resting on inequality. It centred in 

 inborn heredity. If in the struggle for existence 

 A was able to kill B before B killed A, then the 

 race became a race of As inheriting A's qualities. 

 This was the Darwinian science of evolution in brief. 

 It was based on inborn heredity. There is, accord- 

 ingly, no idea more in prominence in all those modern 

 phases of Western science in which the endeavour 

 has been to make the Darwinian hypothesis the 

 basis of a science of civilization than the concep- 

 tion of the dominant influence of inborn heredity. 



It may be noticed how this idea of a fixed and 

 almost unchangeable heredity for the races and 

 peoples included in civilization has come in our time 

 to colour nearly all political and social theories in 



