SOCIAL HEREDITY 261 



mechanism of social heredity in no way resembles 

 the mechanism of inborn heredity. The mechanism 

 of inborn heredity is in the individual; the 

 mechanism of social heredity is outside of the in- 

 dividual. The medium through which the gains of 

 progress are held and are transmitted in the in- 

 dividual is inborn at birth, and is in the physical 

 apparatus of his body as it has come down from the 

 past. But the medium through which the gains of 

 progress are held and transmitted in society is the 

 accumulated social culture which comes down from 

 the past. No part and no quality in this social 

 inheritance is inborn in the individual. It is en- 

 tirely acquired by him from without. It is imposed 

 upon him by society in every generation. 



Anthropologists have been disputing for a long 

 time about the fact that the human brain does not 

 appear for tens of thousands of generations past to 

 have increased in size or quality in any marked 

 manner. What is really meant by one side is that 

 it has not increased in a manner which corresponds 

 to the enormous and almost incalculable interval 

 which separates the results of mind in modern 

 civilized man from the results of mind in primitive 

 man ages before the dawn of history. 



But the point, the significance of which is nearly 

 always overlooked in the controversy, is that the 



