288 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



imagined importance of social heredity in a creature 

 like man whose almost unlimited power on the 

 horizon before him in civilization rests exclusively 

 on the potentiality of mind in the social state ? 



As the observations on social heredity begun with 

 animals were carried into human society, the first 

 fact encountered was very remarkable. Notwith- 

 standing the supreme importance of social heredity 

 in the evolution of civilization, there has not been 

 in the past any wide or systematic study of it 

 conducted on modern scientific lines. Nearly all 

 the research work on the subject of heredity in 

 human society that has been done in the past 

 consists of experiments, observations, and discussions 

 concerned almost exclusively with the relatively 

 less important subject of inborn heredity. In 

 much of this work also, as in a considerable propor- 

 tion of Gal ton's observations and in the studies 

 of many writers in criminology, the subject of 

 inborn heredity and of social heredity is almost 

 inextricably confused. 



My own studies of social heredity were under- 

 taken with the definite object of endeavouring to 

 distinguish, as in animals, between the effects of 

 inborn heredity and the effects of social heredity. 

 They were conducted in various parts of the world 

 amongst aboriginal races, ruling races, aristocracies, 



