172 MENDELISM chap. 



that this progress is largely due to improvements in 

 education and hygiene. The people of to-day are 

 better fitted to cope with their material surroundings 

 than were the people of even a few thousand years 

 ago. And as time goes on they are able more and 

 more to control the workings of the world around 

 them. But there is no reason for supposing that 

 this is because the effects of education are inherited. 

 Man stores knowledge as a bee stores honey or a 

 squirrel stores nuts. With man, however, the hoard 

 is of a more lasting nature. Each generation in 

 using it sifts, adds, and rejects, and passes it on to 

 the next a little better and a little fuller. When 

 we speak of progress we generally mean that the 

 hoard has been improved, and is of more service to 

 man in his attempts to control his surroundings. 

 Sometimes this hoarded knowledge is spoken of as 

 the inheritance which a generation receives from 

 those who have gone before. This is misleading. 

 The handing on of such knowledge has nothing 

 more to do with heredity in the biological sense than 

 has the handing on from parent to offspring of a 

 picture, or a title, or a pair of boots. All these 

 things are but the transfer from zygote to zygote 

 of something extrinsic to the species. Heredity, on 

 the other hand, deals with the transmission of some- 

 thing intrinsic from gamete to zygote and from 

 zygote to gamete. It is the participation of the 

 gamete in the process that is our criterion of what 

 is and what is not heredity. 



Better hygiene and better education, then, are 

 good for the zygote, because they help him to make 

 the fullest use of his inherent qualities. But the 



