DECEMBER 24, 1897. ] 
unknown to fame. Moreover, such feats 
as were performed by the Greeks would 
not have been recognized as great among 
prehistoric peoples, and such intellectual 
giants, but physical weaklings, of the 
modern world as Darwin and Spencer would 
have earned, and in that state of society 
deserved, the contempt of their fellows. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer attributes much of 
the contents of man’s mind to the trans- 
mission and accumulation of acquired 
mental characters. Thus he attributes the 
altruistic feelings to this cause and antici- 
pates a happy future for many by their con- 
tinued increase. Mr. B. Kidd, whom I 
eonfess I have a little difficulty in taking 
seriously, on the other hand, attributes 
these feelings to Natural Selection. He is 
very severe on Mr. Herbert Spencer and 
writes : ‘‘ The confusion of ideas to which the 
tendencies of the times give rise finds re- 
markable expression in Mr. Herbert Spen- 
cer’s writings.” * The tendencies of the 
time seem to have confused Mr. Kidd’s own 
ideas to an even greater extent, and it 
would have been well had he harkened to 
Mr. Spencer’s warning against thinking in 
abstract terms. + 
As already indicated in this JourNAL,} 
Natural Selection implies elimination of the 
unfittest, and Mr. Kidd has failed to record 
a single death as due to the absence of this 
feeling in him who perished, and the pres- 
ence of itin him who survived. Having 
regard to the foregoing, is it not abundantly 
evident that the altruistic feelings have not 
undergone evolution at all in man, neither 
by the transmission of inborn characters nor 
that of acquired characters? As I say the 
child of a philanthropist if reared by West 
African savages might well be a fiend in 
cruelty, he certainly would have no philan- 
thropic tendencies as we understand them ; 
* ‘Social Evolution,’ p. 158. 
’ + ‘ The Inadequacy of Natural Selection,’ p. 67. 
~ tSeptember 11, 1897, p. 371. 
SCIEN CE. 
947 
the child of a cannibal, properly trained, 
might well develop into a philanthropist ; 
and surely that which may be entirely 
lapsed or developed in a single generation 
cannot properly be regarded as a direct 
product of evolution. Like patriotism, or 
devotion to a particular religious system, 
or a knowledge of language, or of letters, or 
of the uses of steam, or of the bicycle, the al- 
truistic feelings are purely acquired (and not 
transmissible), and are not immediate prod- ~ 
ucts of evolution, but result indirectly from 
the evolution of man’s mental receptivity, 
thatis, from the evolution of his vast power 
of acquiring mental characters. Men in 
various times and places have been taught to 
worship sticks and stones, and to hold in 
reverence all kinds of absurd beliefs and 
notions, so also a child—any child—by fit 
training may be rendered highly altruistic 
—may be taught to receive and practice 
altruism, as he may be taught to reverence 
and practice fetishism ; whence it follows, 
as a logical conclusion, that in every indi- 
vidual the altruistic feelings are purely ac- 
quired. It matters not that, in a greater 
or less degree, they are universal. So is 
knowledge of language and religion, which, 
though universal, isas much acquired as is a 
knowledge of history or of astronomy. If, 
then, in the ancestry of man, these feelings 
were ever instinctive, as we may suppose 
them to be among bees, this instinct, like 
almost all others, was lapsed long ago, and 
was replaced by an acquired character.* 
We need not await, then, the slow evo- 
lution of the social millenium by the accu- 
mulation of inborn altruistic variations, as 
Mr. Kidd expects, nor by the accumulation 
(and transmission) of acquired variations, 
as Mr. Spencer expects. Were we allagreed 
*I cannot here pause to discuss the cause of the 
retrogression of instinct. But I have dealt at length 
with the cause of the retrogression of physical parts 
in my book, and that of the retrogression of instinct 
follows the same law. An outline of the theory was 
given in SCIENCE of September 3, 1896. 
