SOCIAL HEREDITY 287 



young birds instantly to take flight. The exact 

 distance to which man is allowed to approach is the 

 danger limit fixed by the long accumulated experi- 

 ence of the species, which is thus transmitted to the 

 young and which is fixed in them ineradicably 

 under conditions of emotion. But when a group of 

 tamed birds is isolated and the social heredity is 

 thus changed, it is found that the altered inherit- 

 ance is similarly transmitted to future generations. 

 The supreme interest of the foregoing facts is 

 not in their relation to any of the problems of 

 animal life. Their great importance lies in the 

 application which they bear to the highest and most 

 vital problems of human society. When we re- 

 member how few and unimportant are the examples 

 of the social state among the higher animals below 

 man, the unexpected magnitude of the part played 

 by social heredity even in such conditions has great 

 significance. If social heredity thus transmitted 

 anew to the young in every generation is the agency 

 through which there may be imposed and fixed on 

 whole species possessing no distinctive social habits 

 some of the most characteristic qualities of these 

 species, and if these qualities ineradicable in the indi- 

 vidual can nevertheless be entirely replaced in another 

 generation by quite different qualities, similarly im- 

 posed by social hervdity, what then must be the un- 



