﻿Introduction. 33 



of the effects of culture from generation to generation. 

 Quite apart from any question as to the hereditary 

 transmission of acquired characters, we have in this 

 intellectual transmission of acquired experience a 

 means of accumulative cultivation quite beyond our 

 powers to estimate. For, unlike all other cases where 

 we recognize the great influence of individual use or 

 practice in augmenting congenital "faculties" (such 

 as in the athlete, pianist, &c.), in this case the effects of 

 special cultivation do not end with the individual life, 

 but are carried on and on through successive genera- 

 tions ad infinitum. Hence, a civilized man inherits 

 mentally, if not physically, the effects of culture for 

 ages past, and this in whatever direction he may choose 

 to profit therefrom. Moreover — and I deem this 

 an immensely important addition — in this unique 

 department of purely intellectual transmission, a 

 kind of non-physical natural selection is perpetually 

 engaged in producing the best results. For here 

 a struggle for existence is constantly taking place 

 among " ideas," " methods," and so forth, in what 

 may be termed a psychological environment. The 

 less fit are superseded by the more fit, and this not 

 only in the mind of the individual, but, through lan- 

 guage and literature, still more in the mind of the race. 

 "A Newton, a La Place, a Gauss, or a Cayley," 

 would all alike have been impossible, but for a pre- 

 viously prolonged course of mental evolution due to the 

 selection principle operating in the region of mathe- 

 matics, by means of continuous survivals of the best 

 products in successive generations. And, of course, 

 the same remark applies to art in all its branches l . 



1 In Prof. Lloyd Morgan's Animal Life and Intelligence there is an 

 II. D 



