272 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



before the Russo-Japanese War spoke habitually 

 of a people like the Japanese as yellow monkeys. A 

 similar habit of mind pervaded in great strength 

 the characteristic type of German literature which 

 led up to the world war that opened in 1914. In 

 all its phases that literature in Germany may be 

 observed to have been saturated with the influence 

 of the assumption that the Germanic races possessed 

 some inborn mental heredity which made them 

 superior to other peoples. 



When the question is asked, What basis is there 

 for the conception, thus put forward under so many 

 recent forms in the West, which sets up inborn 

 heredity as the determining influence in the evolu- 

 tion of civilization ? The answer must be emphatic. 

 The idea has no permanent basis in knowledge. 

 The movement in the West which has essayed to 

 establish the science of human progress on the 

 control and organization of any peculiar inborn 

 heredity either in races or in individuals is based on 

 illusion. It is a movement which has given rise 

 to one of the most pernicious and reactionary de- 

 velopments which has characterized the Western 

 world for five centuries. 



In the evolution of Power in civilization the 

 heredity which controls everything is the social 

 heredity which is transmitted through social culture. 



