NATURE, HISTORY, AND ETHICS 411 



natural selection. It can be understood as an instinct, 

 and instincts arise and grow by natural selection. 



But we should be one-sided if we tried to explain the 

 higher civilisation solely by selection of the more socially 

 disposed and the more intelligent. There is a second 

 factor to be considered, even a more important one. 

 This is tradition. 



Tradition is found almost exclusively amongst human 

 beings. It may be that among the higher animals a 

 method of catching prey, or building the nest, or 

 singing, is maintained by tradition, perhaps even 

 furthered by it, the young learning from the old ; but 

 this hardly calls for consideration. It is quite otherwise 

 with man. In his case tradition has a solid foundation 

 in speech, in drawings and the work of the hand. It is 

 due to this that the skill which one man has acquired 

 during life is not lost when he dies, but taught to his 

 descendants ; they can learn it in a short time, and 

 advance it in their turn. In this way tradition brings 

 about a certain mental transmission of acquired 

 characters, though this has nothing to do with the 

 Lamarckian principle, since nothing is inherited. 



Let us take an instance. 



In a certain coast-land a man worked throughout his 

 whole life at some contrivance for enabling people to 

 travel on the sea. Towards the close of his life he 

 invented a boat. If there were no tradition, the 

 invention would die with him, and the human race 

 would have to wait until some germ-variation happened 

 to occur that qualified the man developing from it to 



