SOCIAL HEREDITY 278 



The greatest lesson which modern Germany has 

 taught civilization in the world war which began 

 in 1914 is not any of the lessons upon which at- 

 tention has been mainly concentrated. It is the 

 lesson that the collective heredity which is trans- 

 mitted through culture is the master principle of 

 the world. Every inborn quality in a people is 

 ultimately subordinate to this social heredity. 

 For the highest of all abilities with which a people 

 can be equipped is the ability to organize and to 

 subordinate themselves to the kind of culture upon 

 which Power rests and which is always transmitted 

 through the social heredity. There has been no 

 people in the world who has possessed in a higher 

 degree the power of subordinating themselves to 

 the social heredity transmitted through culture 

 than the German peoples. If it had been the fortune 

 of those peoples to have had impressed upon them, 

 preceding the outbreak of the war of 1914, an en- 

 lightened culture there is no goal in civilization to 

 which they might not successfully have aspired. 



The social heredity transmitted through social 

 culture is infinitely more important to a people than 

 any heredity inborn in the individuals thereof. It is 

 through collective heredity that the long sequences 

 of cause and effect upon which Power rests are 



imposed on the human mind in civilization. 

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