17.8 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



being preserves him from destruction in the struggle for life. 

 Natural selection secures the preservation of the more plas- 

 tic, and this, in turn, makes it still more difficult to secure 

 advance in innate character. 



Likewise sexual selection, choice in marriage, among 

 humankind is based not alone on innate character, but upon 

 what the character has become through training. This again 

 hinders advance in innate character through sexual selection. 



But however powerful training may be in determining 

 the character of the adult man or woman, still the innate 

 character does count, and in the long run both natural selec- 

 tion and sexual selection should tend to modify it. The 

 child with weak body may by training become a strong 

 man, yet, in general, it is true that the strong children 

 make the strong men. So also a child of inferior intel- 

 lectual endowments may by proper culture become a man 

 of considerable intellectual development, yet on the whole 

 it is true that men of high mental power were probably 

 boys of good intellectual capacities. 



We know less about innate moral character, still it seems 

 to be true that men differ greatly in their innate moral sound- 

 ness and moral sensitiveness. There is much evidence in 

 favor of the belief that one of mediocre moral endowments 

 may by proper training become a man of moral power, yet 

 here again it seems to be true that, in general, innate moral 

 capacities are correlated with high moral attainments. 



If, therefore, there is such a general correlation between 

 innate capacities and attainments, whether physical, intellec- 

 tual, or moral, it must follow that, in so far as natural and 

 sexual selection operate, they will tend gradually to modify 

 innate character in these three aspects. 





