APPENDIX D 233 



and civilised nations have vast state establishments for educating 

 their youth. Moreover, we reahse that a child reared by the 

 brave or the cowardly, the active or slothful, the moral or the 

 immoral, the patriotic or the non-patriotic, the devout or the 

 sceptical, and so forth, will generally exhibit the trait of his 

 educators, even if they be not his progenitors. In fact, we realise, 

 as regards man (though this is not true as regards such animals as 

 the dragon-fly, in which, as we have seen, the mentally acquired 

 is practically non-existent), that the mind of one generation 

 imprints itself on the mind of the next, not racially, but educa- 

 tionally. But, in thinking of this or that adult man, or this or that 

 race, we are apt to consider their mental peculiarities as innate. 

 Especially is this done by men of learning, historians, anthro- 

 pologists, psychologists, philosophers, and the like. It is not 

 realised by them that man's real mental evolution has lain in the 

 evolution of his power of acquiring mental traits, and that not in 

 a single other inborn peculiarity does he mentally transcend 

 lower animals, and, therefore, that one adult individual or race 

 must differ from another individual or race wholly in the traits 

 that are acquired, and in the power of acquiring them. For 

 example, no man or race is born with greater musical, artistic, or 

 mathematical powers than any other man or race, but merely 

 with greater powers of acquiring them ; for, in the absence of 

 appropriate stimulation {i.e. experience, education), they do 

 not develop even in the most "gifted." It seems probable, 

 moreover, that powers of acquiring these and other particular 

 faculties have not been separately and specially evolved by 

 Natural Selection, but, on the contrary, that they are but 

 particular manifestations of the general power of acquiring mental 

 traits, which is what has been evolved by Natural Selection. 

 Thus there appears to be no more reason for supposing that the 

 mathematical faculty has been especially evolved than for 

 supposing that the faculty for understanding the uses of 

 machinery has been evolved ; both the one and the other must 

 have been equally useless to the primitive savage. 



In lower animals the amount of mental receptivity is closely 



