EVOLUTION OF MAN 



175 



lution of the race, on the other hand, is a fundamentally 

 different thing. It will be secured by the same methods 

 which are operative to produce evolution among the lower 

 animals, i.e. through natural selection and sexual selection, 

 influenced of course by segregation. We have seen that it 

 is, to say the least, very doubtful if parental modifications 

 are inherited. We have no reason to believe that the 

 progress in culture, .secured by education in one generation, 

 will directly improve the innate character of the children 

 of the next generation. 



Were the effects of education inherited, human evolution 

 should be rapid, but it has been slow ; how slow perhaps few 

 of us realize. We speak with pride of the advance in human 

 civilization, of our progress in the arts and in useful knowl- 

 edge, of the improvement in morals and the growth of altru- 

 ism, and this all makes us blind to the fact that since the 

 dawn of history there has been no very great real evolution 

 of mankind. We reach larger results in the problem of life 

 than did our progenitors five thousand years ago, but we are 

 able to do so because we build upon their experience and 

 that of all the generations between. 



Have we much greater innate powers ? Are we at birth 

 endowed with characters having much higher possibilities 

 and much higher tendencies physically, intellectually, and 

 morally ? Have we to-day men of much greater physical 

 prowess than the ancient conquerors of the world, than the 

 builders who constructed the monuments of Egypt ? Have 

 we more adventurous spirits or more successful explorers than 

 the Phoenicians, who without compass sailed the ancient seas, 

 reaching the whole Atlantic coast of Europe and the British 

 Isles, also passing southward even around the tip of Africa? 



